


The Answer

by apolesen



Category: Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: Alien Mythology/Religion, F/M, Implied/Referenced Torture, Jewish Character, M/M, Minor Character Death, Plotty, Post-Canon, See notes for full trigger warnings, TOS triumvirate, Terrorism, Vulcan, Vulcan Culture, Vulcan Language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-20
Updated: 2019-09-11
Packaged: 2020-03-08 13:32:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 68,250
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18895606
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apolesen/pseuds/apolesen
Summary: It was supposed to be a holiday, their first since retiring from Starfleet, but something is wrong on Vulcan. A group of logic extremists are waging a campaign of fear as they expand their territory. When Spock goes missing during a reconnaissance mission, Kirk and McCoy see only one option: to brave the dangers of the Vulcan desert and find him.





	1. Part I: Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was written in early 2017, before Star Trek: Discovery premiered. It came out of discussions with my fandom partner-in-crime illogicalbroccoli about logic extremism in Vulcan. (Imagine my surprise when that turned up in Discovery!) I made the decision to not post this when I first wrote it, as I felt that it might be a bit close to home due to world events then. Now, two years later, I have decided to go ahead and post it. 
> 
> Due to when this was written, this fic is not actively Discovery-compliant. However, I have added a few references to Discovery events in re-editing it, and anything that is directly contradicted in Discovery has been changed. 
> 
> Trigger warnings (for the whole fic): Graphic depictions of violence, torture, minor character death, acts of terror. Discussion of chemical weapons, xenophobia, homophobia, mental illness. Brief mentions of suicide ideation.

 

T’Kuht had set, and the sun had reached its zenith. Its rays made the spires of Shi’Kahr gleam, throwing the reflections of the sunlight onto the buildings. Even inside the air-conditioned conference room, it was getting uncomfortably hot.

Leonard McCoy wiped his brow on his sleeve, took a sip of water and tried to focus on the discussion. It was interesting – Vulcanoid endocrine disorders was something he had spent a lot of time thinking about – but he was having trouble concentrating. They had been here since early morning and none of the others seemed like they needed a break. He pulled himself up in his chair and tried to follow what Sotak was saying. It was a good point about the interplay between different disorders, but McCoy found he could not follow. He blinked a few times.

‘Doctor McCoy.’

He looked up, wondering for a moment if he had nodded off. He could not read any emotions in the fourteen Vulcan faces turned towards him. It was Sotak, the senior member there, who had said his name.

‘You appear out of sorts, Doctor.’

‘I’m fine,’ McCoy said. ‘But humans can’t concentrate for as long as you can, and I think I need something to eat.’

Sotak looked surprised for a moment before his usually schooled expression returned. Behind that logical façade, McCoy thought he saw a hint of embarrassment.

‘Naturally. I apologise. We will reconvene in an hour’s time.’

‘No need to cut it short on my account,’ McCoy said as he rose.

‘We value your insights, Doctor McCoy,’ said T’Paal. ‘There is no need to exclude you simply for your natural need for sustenance and rest.’

McCoy smiled.

‘Thank you, Doctor T’Paal.’

They all got up. Some left at once, while others formed small groups to talk. T’Paal crossed to McCoy.

‘Would you like company or solitude?’ she asked.

‘Solitude today, I think,’ McCoy said. T’Paal nodded in acknowledgement.

‘Very well. I will see you in an hour.’

‘See you then.’

Collaborating with Vulcans brought with it its fair share of culture shock, but McCoy had discovered that he quite liked the scientists at the Vulcan Science Academy. For one thing, they were not prone to long goodbyes, and they understood the need to be alone. On Earth, he would have had to dodge lunch-invitations and shake off hangers-on, but here, he made it out of the building without anyone bothering him.

Squinting in the bright sunlight, he unfolded the parasol Lady Amanda had given him. He had felt ridiculous with the thing at first, but most humans he saw carried similar shields against the sun. Besides, considering the strength of the sun he would take the risk of looking silly over the sun-burn.

McCoy made his way off campus, towards the centre of Shi’Kahr. The tranquility of the city, the biggest on the planet, always surprised him. The only constant sound was that of running water. He crossed two irrigation ditches, broad enough to be small rivers. There were public fountains on every street and every square. It was common to see passers-by stop and drink from them. McCoy had always thought that on a world where water was an uncommon thing, it would be guarded and only carefully distributed. Instead, water was the life-blood of Shi’Kahr. The irrigation-ditches cooled the air and watered the plantations around the city. The neighbourhood fountain served as a meeting-place. There were still places on Earth where people died because the water was polluted and the clean alternative cost money. On Vulcan, where it would make sense to hoard the water, it was instead accepted as a collective thing. The need for water had shaped Shi’Kahr – every building had water collection vats on the roof, every district had large, elaborately decorated cisterns, every person had the right to drink.

McCoy turned onto a square where the sound of voices mingled with the sound of the water. The market was busy at this time of day, but it was not loud like a market on Earth was. Walking in between the stalls was moving through a slow hum of controlled voices. Despite the measured speech-patterns of those around him, McCoy found the place refreshingly lively. The smell of strange spices hung in the air. Fruit stands overflowed with oddly shaped produce in blue, purple, orange and pink. At another stand, a mother and daughter sold cones of edible flowers. As the older woman chatted to the greengrocer set up in the next stall, the girl spoke to a young man about the flowers. McCoy could not be sure, but he thought that they were flirting. Fifteen years ago, he had imagined that Vulcan society was a sterile, squared-in place. Meeting what he had come to think of as “ordinary Vulcans”, not because of their genetics, but rather their social status, had disabused him of that notion. They were undeniably logical, but the average Vulcan appeared far more approachable than Spock and his aristocratic family.

McCoy bought what looked rather like an Earth falafel and sat down by the market’s fountain to eat it. A mother passed with a child in tow. The little Vulcan stared at him unashamedly – she must never have seen a human before. Even in the capital on the planet, humans were few. McCoy waved at her and, though he knew it would not help to set her at ease, smiled. The girl frowned and hurried after her mother. Unworried by the rejection, McCoy leaned back against the fountain’s edge, enjoying the small drops splashing against his neck.

Afterwards, he could not say what it was that had tipped him off. Suddenly alert, he looked around. Something had caught his attention, for a moment so brief that he did not know what. Despite the warm day, he had goosebumps. It felt like the world around him was holding its breath. The air seemed to pull inwards, away from him.

The world exhaled. The pressure-wave hit.


	2. Part II

Noon approached. A hot wind blew in from the desert, bringing with it the smell of sand. James T. Kirk scratched his nose and folded his hands over the book lying face-down on his stomach. Through his eyelids, all he could see was brilliant red. If he opened his eyes, it would not be much different. The rose garden was an isolated, familiar thing on the alien world. He kept his eyes closed. He was about to drift off. 

‘Sleeping in this weather is never a good idea.’ 

He sat up quickly, startled. The book fell to the ground, landing with a thump. Lady Amanda put down the tray she had been carrying and retrieved the book.

‘Thank you,’ Jim said, taking it from her and smoothing out the page that had become creased. ‘What’s that?’

‘Elderflower cordial. Made from real Earth elderflower.’ She poured him a glass. He took it and tasted it. 

‘This is very good.’ 

Amanda sat down as well. 

‘I have had many years of practice. The first few times, it was impossible to drink. One time, I added too much lemon juice, and it turned so sour that Spock refused to eat anything with lemon in it for about two years. But I kept at it, and now it’s pretty decent.’ 

Jim took another sip. 

‘It’s good to keep busy, I suppose.’ 

Amanda raised an eyebrow and gave him a meaningful look. He sighed and leaned back. 

‘There is nothing you can say that Bones hasn’t told me a hundred times.’ 

‘I’m not going to lecture you,’ she said. ‘I simply think you should find something you enjoy doing. I hate seeing you miserable.’

‘I’m not miserable.’ 

‘Oh pish,’ Amanda said. ‘I may have lived among Vulcans for most of my life, but I know misery when I see it.’ 

‘Maybe I’m a little miserable,’ Jim admitted. ‘But what is there to do?’ 

‘Anything you can put your mind to. You need to find something. You’ll waste away if all you do is lie in the sun and try to read _Finnegans Wake_. That’s all you’ve been doing the past month.’ 

‘I just have no idea what to do,’ he said. ‘I’ve been racking my brains about it for over a year now, and I can’t think of anything I value doing, apart from my job. Spock has it easier – he doesn’t need a ship to do science. Bones can go make friends with some doctors and sit in on seminars and work on that xenomedical textbook he’s wanted to write for so long. But me? You can’t command a spaceship as a hobby.’ 

‘You had hobbies before,’ Amanda said. ‘Surely there must be something you can do?’

‘I don’t know. There’s reading – but it’s passive. I do it too much and I get restless. Antiques isn’t a proper hobby. I’m not interested in collecting for collecting’s sake. I can’t do rock-climbing anymore, with my arthritis. I could try taking up riding again, but my knees might cause problems, and Spock would worry himself sick. I couldn’t take that.’ He sighed. ‘I must be destined to become an _alter kocker_.’ 

‘Jim, language!’ Amanda laughed. Then she became serious. ‘I can’t tell you what to do, but you will find something. I went from teaching Greek lyric at Princeton to being the wife of an ambassador. That was difficult at first, but then it wasn’t.’ She put aside her empty glass. ‘On the other hand, I chose it. You didn’t choose to retire.’ 

‘No,’ Jim said. He turned his glass around in his hands, thinking. ‘What did people say, when you married Sarek?’ 

Amanda smiled.

‘People were surprised and, admittedly, worried. Especially my family. They could not understand why I would give up my career and my home planet for marriage. Of course, they didn’t see Sarek the way I did. They thought he was cold and arrogant. They didn’t understand that it wasn’t just me who was in love.’ She smiled to herself. ‘My parents kept asking “why? Why would you move to another solar-system? Why would you adopt his customs? Aren’t you allowing him to oppress you?”’ 

‘What did you say to that?’ Jim asked, surprised. 

‘I just pointed out that they had said nothing like that when my cousin Helen married a devout man and went from wearing jumpsuits to wearing a dress and tichel. The only difference was that my husband wasn’t human.’ 

Jim laughed. 

‘I hope that calmed them down a bit.’ 

‘At least it gave them something to think about,’ she said. ‘They were lovely about it, once they got used to it.’ 

They sat in silence for a while. The sun was getting so bright that it was starting to hurt Jim’s eyes. Finally, he picked up his book and got up. 

‘I’m going inside. I think the heat is getting to me.’ 

‘Jim?’ 

He stopped, surprised at Amanda’s tone of voice. She had been relaxed and light-hearted earlier. Now, she watched him with concern in her eyes.

‘Before you go, please tell me,’ she said. ‘Is Spock alright?’ 

The question took him aback. 

‘Yes. He’s fine.’ 

She bit her lip.

‘It’s just… He seems worried. He spends so much time in his study…’

Jim shrugged.

‘I think he’s just getting a bit carried away in his research. You know how he is.’ 

She did not look convinced, but smiled. 

‘Yes, I do. Thank you, Jim.’ 

He left, feeling more wretched than before. It had not been an outright lie, he told himself, but that did not make him feel better. He knew exactly what Amanda meant. Spock clearly had something on his mind, and Jim did not know what. He had tried to ask, but he kept evading the question. Whatever it was kept him busy, cooped up in his study for hours on end, reading and taking notes. He would come to bed when Jim was almost asleep. Sometimes when he woke in the night, he found him gone. When he went up to look, he would see the light on in the study. Several times, Spock had left the estate and been away for most of the day, only to come back deep in thought. 

He made his way to the study now. He had not seen Spock since breakfast, and he wanted to make sure that the untruth he had told Amanda was not too great. The door was open, so he stepped in. 

‘Spock?’ 

There was no one there – he must be in some other part of the house. When Jim stepped up to the desk, he saw that one of the PADDs was not set to sleep mode. He could not been planning to be gone long. For a moment, he deliberated. He did not want to snoop, but the curiosity was tugging at him. The material was not locked, only paused. He gave in and tapped the screen. It took so little effort that it might as well have been accidental. 

A video started playing. It was a closeup on a Vulcan man’s face, staring straight into the camera. For the first ten seconds, nothing happened. The only thing that told Jim that it was not a still image was how the man’s nostrils moved as he breathed. Perhaps it was some kind of art, he thought. It did not really seem to have a purpose… 

The shadows on the man’s face changed; someone had stepped up to him. Next, a hand came into the frame. It came to rest on the man’s head, steadying it. Then, another hand. Jim felt his stomach doing a somersault. It held a knife. The man’s eyes did not leave the camera lens. He stared up from the screen, straight at the viewer. Jim looked for some emotion in those eyes – fear, desperation, defiance – but there was none. The knife pushed into his face. Slowly, it slid from the corner of his mouth, back towards his ear. The man did not look away. He did not scream. Blood oozed from the wound. From within it there was a flash of white tooth enamel. The hand twisted the knife, pushing it further in. The green blood dripped from the man’s lips. Jim pressed a hand to his mouth. He thought he was going to be sick.

‘Jim?’ 

Jim looked up, away from the gruesome video. Spock stood in the doorway. The questioning look in his eyes changed to alarm. Swiftly, he crossed to him. He looked at Jim, then down at the desk. Jim turned away, not wanting to see more. From the corner of his eye, he saw Spock close the PADD. 

‘Jim, you should sit down,’ Spock said. He reached for his arm, but Jim shook him off. 

‘What the hell was that?’ he asked. 

Spock looked concerned, but did not try to touch him again. Instead, he folded his hands in front of his body. 

‘It was regrettable that you saw that.’ 

‘What was it?’ Jim repeated. ‘Who is that man?’ 

‘He was named Satak,’ Spock said. ‘Considering other video I have reviewed, he should be referred to in the past tense.’ 

The feeling that he might vomit came back. He closed his eyes hard, trying to excise the memory of what he had seen. When he spoke again, he heard himself use the voice he reserved for orders on the bridge. 

‘Spock, what are you working on, and how does footage of Vulcans being tortured fit into it?’ 

Spock watched him for a moment before sitting down. He took his time, stretching out his legs and steepling his fingers. Jim remained standing. 

‘The footage you saw was released by the Kesaya.’

He searched his knowledge of Vulcan.

‘“Answer”?’ 

‘That is the meaning of the word,’ Spock said. ‘It is also the moniker of an organisation.’

Jim searched his memory. 

‘Didn’t Valeris say something about the Kesaya at her trial?’

Spock nodded.

‘She was an early follower of the group’s ideals.’ 

‘Who are they?’ 

‘An insurgent group of Vulcans. It is estimated that they have taken over 70 percent of the Tanit desert – an area roughly twice the size of California.’ 

Jim stared at him. Spock met his eye. His gaze was steady, as though he had prepared for this confrontation. 

‘The Tanit desert is just twenty kilometres from here.’ 

‘Yes, approximately.’ 

‘Wait,’ Jim said. ‘Slow down. This can’t be right.’ He started pacing. 

‘Neither of us have made any factual errors,’ Spock said. ‘But you are clearly referring to the implausibility of the situation, likely as you have not heard of this before.’ 

‘Yes, exactly. Why has there been nothing on the newsfeed? Why haven’t you mentioned it before?’ 

Spock let his hands fall. 

‘You have not heard of it because the Vulcan government has decided to keep the extent of the the group’s gains largely secret. They do not want widespread unrest, and they do not want Federation involvement.’ 

‘And why are you working on this?’ 

Spock pulled a very human face of regret, then looked him in the eye. 

‘I am the Federation involvement.’ 

Jim stopped pacing. When he spoke, he had lost his bridge voice. Instead, it sounded choked. 

‘We went here to visit your mother.’ 

‘Yes.’ 

‘And to get away from San Francisco.’ 

‘Yes.’ 

‘Are you telling me that’s not true?’ 

Spock considered it. 

‘Those reasons are not untrue. However, I had had this trip in mind for some time.’ 

‘How long, Spock?’ 

Now, he looked away. 

‘Since I learned of Valeris’ betrayal.’ 

‘That was eighteen months ago.’ 

‘Yes.’ 

Jim planted his hands on the desk, steadying himself. He drew a deep breath. Anger did not work. 

‘You lied to me,’ he said matter-of-factly. 

‘Only by omission.’ 

‘That’s still a lie.’ His voice shook – he had to stop to collect himself again. ‘Does anyone else know about this?’ 

‘Father. A handful of diplomatic staff. The president.’ 

Jim stared at him in disbelief. 

‘The president of the Federation sent you here and you thought it was a good idea to pretend we were just going to visit your mum?’

Spock’s face was almost unmoving, but for a small tug as he bit the inside of his lower lip.

‘I did not want to cause you distress.’ 

‘Cause me distress!?’ Jim shouted. ‘I just found out you’re on some secret diplomatic mission investigating some militant group that cuts up their enemies’ faces!’ 

Spock interlaced his fingers, grounding himself. 

‘ _That_ is incorrect.’ 

‘What? That it’s secret? That it’s diplomatic?’

‘No,’ Spock said. ‘The man you saw being tortured was not an enemy.’ 

‘I… what?’ It made no sense. 

‘That man was a member of the Kesaya.’

Jim stared at him, not sure was to say or do. He felt sick again. He did not want to fight – he wanted to go to him and hold him, ask him about how he could have spent so much time on something so gruesome and not tell him about it, not let him help… 

The door flew open. Spock jumped to his feet, Jim turned. Amanda was in the doorway, eyes wide and face pale. 

‘Spock, Jim, something’s happened…’ 

They did have to speak or even look at each other. The two men set off at a run. Lady Amanda got out of the way just in time. They could hear her following them, as fast as she could. 

They came to a stop in the entrance hall. Jim felt himself weighed down by equal amounts of relief and fear. Coming up the steps towards the front door were two police officers trying to support McCoy. 

‘I’m fine, I’m fine!’ McCoy said loudly, trying to shake off their hands. ‘I don’t need any help, I’m fine.’ He did not look fine. One side of his face was scratched, and he walked as if he was in pain. Splotches of red and green blood had mingled with dirt on his clothes. ‘You’ve seen me home now, you can go. Thank you.’ As soon as they reached the last step, the officers let go of him and made their escape. 

‘My god, Bones, what happened to you?’ Jim reached out to grab him. McCoy dodged him and limped into the house. 

‘Don’t touch me, I’m a walking biohazard.’ There was something strange about his loud voice. It sounded like someone had plugged his ears.

‘Doctor, what happened?’ Spock asked. 

McCoy looked like he was about to tell them to leave him alone, but he froze mid-motion, and instead bit his lip. For a moment he looked close to tears. 

‘There was a bomb,’ he said curtly. ‘I just got thrown to the ground. This is all from that.’ He gestured to his face. He grimaced, turning it into a mirthless smile. ‘Others weren’t so lucky.’ 

‘Bones…’ 

He put up a hand to stop him. 

‘Not now. I need a shower and a fresh change of clothes. Jim, there’s a bottle of bourbon in the wardrobe in my room. Fetch some glasses, will you?’

***

Half an hour later, they were gathered in McCoy’s bedroom. Lady Amanda had hovered in the doorway before leaving, taking a glass of bourbon away with her. For a few minutes they sat in silence. McCoy, half-lying on the bed, stared into the ceiling. From where he sat on the foot of the bed, Jim thought he could see the thoughts move behind his eyes. Spock still stood by the door, his clasped hands and his solemn face the only things that differentiated him from a shadow. When McCoy finished his drink and moved to top up his glass, Spock said:

‘It is unwise to consume alcohol in your present state, Doctor.’ 

’It’s medicinal,’ McCoy said. Still, he did not drink it at once. Instead, he watched the liquid in the glass, and the way it turned golden where the light hit it.

There was a discrete tap on the door. Spock opened it and exchanged a few word in Vulcan with the servant outside. 

‘Excuse me,’ he said over his shoulder and slipped out. Jim looked back at McCoy; he seemed not to have noticed Spock leaving.

‘There was this little kid,’ he said. ‘She can’t have been more than seven. I don’t know which way she went. Either they turned left, off the square, or they turned right…’ He fell silent. 

‘I’m so sorry, Bones,’ Jim said. 

‘I’ve never seen something anything like it.’ McCoy’s gaze was distant, still directed at the ceiling. ‘Vulcans screaming. The panic… I thought I could feel it pounding at me. I tried to help some of the people who were injured…Perhaps it was because I didn’t expect it, but I think it was one of the worst things I’ve ever seen.’ 

He fell silent again and downed his drink. Just as he put aside his glass, Spock reentered the room, closing the door behind him. 

‘The Kesaya has claimed the attack.’ 

‘What does that mean?’ McCoy asked. Jim looked Spock in the eye. 

‘I think you should start from the beginning.’ 

Spock exhaled, not quite a sigh but close, and stepped closer. 

‘The short version, Doctor McCoy, is this. The Kesaya is an insurgent group with its roots in an ideological movement started at Vulcan university campuses. I was first made aware of them during my meld with Valeris.’ 

‘He’s working on it for the Federation,’ Jim said, not trying to hide his displeasure. McCoy frowned and shot Spock a glance. 

‘I was the logical choice for the role,’ Spock said. ‘I had already expressed my concerns of the group’s activities before they became an established paramilitary organisation, so I was already aware of their existence. In addition, I had no other duties.’ 

‘So Valeris was a member of this… Kesaya,’ McCoy said. 

‘Rather a follower of their principles. During Valeris’ time at the university at Shi’Kahr, the Kesaya movement was in its infancy – more a loosely knit group of peers than an organisation.’ 

‘Was she acting on their orders?’ Jim asked. He wanted to know just how entangled she had been in this. 

‘No. Her actions were her own. But the Kesaya has adopted her as something of a martyr.’ McCoy expressed the thought before Jim had the chance. 

‘This is an emotional conflict of interest if I ever saw one.’ 

Spock raised an eyebrow. 

‘Your meaning, Doctor?’

‘Valeris was your protégée, and she betrayed you. You feel responsible for what she did, and now you’re trying to atone.’ 

‘That would hardly be logical.’ 

‘Damn logic!’ McCoy shouted, even louder than usual due to his burst ear-drums. ‘You’re personally invested in this.’ 

‘Of course I am,’ Spock said. ‘The Kesaya poses a threat to the Federation, and the culture and customs of my home-planet. But I can still be objective.’ 

‘So what do they want?’ Jim asked. He was trying to put together the few pieces of information he had – the torture video of one of their own, the assassination plot, the bombing of civilians – but the pieces did not fit together. 

‘In a planetary scale, they are isolationists. Valeris hoped to destabilise the Federation enough to make it possible for Vulcan to withdraw.’ 

‘There have always been Vulcan separatists,’ Jim said. ‘But attacking their own…’ 

‘The Kesaya is not primarily driven by policy matters, but ideology. The reason for their dislike of the policy is the perceived inferiority of less logical races.’ 

‘So why target other Vulcans?’ 

‘To brew fear,’ Spock said, ‘as any such action would.’ 

McCoy put a hand to his forehead. 

‘My head is spinning. I can’t think about politics right now.’ 

‘You should rest,’ Jim said. 

‘Do you require anything, Doctor?’ asked Spock. 

‘Just peace and quiet.’ He had already closed his eyes. ‘You can explain all of this later.’ 

‘Then we will leave you.’ 

Spock moved to the door. Jim patted Bones on the shoulder, trying not to reflect on how old and frail he looked. As though sensing his worry, McCoy waved his hand dismissively. 

‘I’m fine. Go.’ 

‘See you later, then.’ 

They left, falling into step without intending to. They walked with a decisiveness that Jim had not felt for eighteen months. It was the way they had used to walk through the ship’s corridors on the way to the bridge. 

Without deliberating, they both went to the study. Jim locked the door after them before turning to face Spock. 

‘You need to explain this to me. None of this adds up. How is spreading fear logical?’ 

‘Because it shows their enemies’ weakness,’ Spock said. ‘How do you imagine a bomb in Shi’Kahr would be received?’ 

‘People would panic. Bones said he’d never seen anything like it.’ 

Spock nodded, unsurprised by his answer. 

‘You saw the footage of the man being tortured.’ 

‘Yes.’ 

‘The Kesaya released that to show their superior self-control. They believe that all emotion and all emotional responses are inherently degenerate. So they purge themselves of it.’ 

‘Like disciples of _kolinahr_?’ Jim hated even saying the word; it brought back the memory of when Spock had returned after three years on Vulcan, cold, distant and ill-looking. 

‘Their practices appear to be much more radical. They doubtless took inspiration from Gol, but they do not agree with the isolation of the disciples there. Instead, they wish to reform society.’ He crossed to the bookshelf and retrieved a box. ‘This is some early material, written for distribution by the first members.’ Setting down the box on the desk, he took out a handful of booklets. They looked much like the kind of thing politically active students might hand out to their peers, but for the fact that they were completely undecorated. There were no illustrations or use of colour. Much of it was only dense text. Jim struggled to read the stylised Vulcan script. The only word he could make out was “Surak”. 

‘So they’re extreme Surak followers?’ Logic extremists were nothing new – Jim knew about the run-ins Spock’s family had had with them in the past. 

‘Quite the contrary,’ Spock said. ‘That title reads “the fallacies of Surak”. According to them, he did not go far enough. The Kesaya sees Surak as a mediocre philosopher with inconsistent ideas. Acceptance of flaws is not acceptable. The principle of IDIC is one they view with disgust. They would see a complete break with the past, with every pre-reform custom still practiced eradicated. They do not approve of family shrines, the old marriage rituals, the tradition of oral poetry – they would see it all gone.’ 

They stood quietly for a moment. 

‘They’re clearly mad,’ Jim said. 

‘I could not say,’ Spock said. ‘I am certain their beliefs are sincere.’

Jim put aside the booklet and sat down. He was used to being briefed on sudden developments in curt ways, but this was nothing like finding out about an some unexpected act of astropolitical aggression over a subspace channel or receiving new, contradicting orders in the middle of a mission. 

‘You’ve been keeping all this to yourself for over a year.’ It came out sounding like a statement. ‘You should have told me about it.’

‘It should not have been your concern too.’ 

‘If it concerns you it concerns me.’ 

‘What purpose would it serve?’ 

Jim threw up his hands in frustration.

‘I could help. Even just – emotionally…’ He faltered. Spock bowed his head, ever so slightly. 

‘I worried that your response would be… disproportionate.’ 

‘How?’ Jim asked. ‘Spock, tell me how?’ 

Spock sat down facing him. It took a moment for him to find the words. 

‘I believed you would respond with concern for me.’ 

‘Is that so strange?’ 

‘I am capable of studying unpalatable things without allowing them to affect me.’ 

‘But…’ He reigned himself in, forcing himself to rephrase his thoughts. ‘Bones is right. This is about Valeris.’ 

‘Not entirely,’ Spock said. ‘But I cannot deny that my concern started there, and it is one of the ways it touches me personally.’ He interlaced his fingers. ‘It is only one among many. Doctor McCoy could have been killed today.’ 

‘Yes.’ 

They were silent for a long while. Jim felt a delayed wave of horror and relief at the near miss. It only became stronger because he could see that Spock felt the same. Slowly, allowing him to draw away if he wished, he reached out to rest his hand on Spock’s arm. He did not move away. Instead, a small smile of gratitude flicked across his face. 

‘You said they thought other races were inferior.’ 

‘Correct,’ Spock said. He no longer sounded measured and business-like, only very tired. 

‘So they don’t like humans much?’

‘Not at all.’ He did not meet Jim’s eye. ‘They also dislike interspecies marriages, and are opposed to genetic engineering which only serves to help only one individual, rather than a large-scale group. They consider it a drain on resources.’ 

‘So they wouldn’t like you.’ 

‘No.’ 

Jim’s hand tightened around his arm. 

‘This is why I wished you’d told me. You shouldn’t have to spend your days reading these people’s propaganda leaflets and then not be able to vent about it.’ 

‘Vulcans do not vent.’ 

Jim reached out with his free hand and placed it against Spock’s cheek. He moved his face against it, grateful for the touch. 

‘I did not tell you because I believed it would anger you,’ Spock said finally. 

‘It does. Is that so strange?’ 

Spock removed the hand resting on his cheek and held it for a moment. 

‘It angers me too.’ 

He rose and went over to the box with the leaflets. He searched through the contents, picking out the ones he was looking for. Then he returned to his chair, handing Jim the leaflets. 

‘I do not know if you can make sense of these.’ 

Jim looked through them. The text was printed in a particularly difficult font, with most distinctive features of the script made so small he could not see them without his glasses. 

‘You’ll have to tell me,’ he said, offering them to Spock. He did not take them. He sat completely still, shoulders squared and hands tightly folded. Jim had a strong sense that he had hoped not to have to explain. 

‘Vulcan customs may not always be ideal when it comes to issues of emotion, but, when codified properly and not flaunted, love has never been seen as negative. Surak, and the philosophers that followed him, all value loyalty, devotion, the willingness to put others before oneself. They accepted that some things are not logical. That is why the rites surrounding taking a spouse have never changed, because the joining of two compatible minds is superior to logic. There is no distinction made between the bond of a husband and wife and the bond between _t’hyl’a_.’ 

‘But the Kesaya does make a distinction.’ 

‘Yes.’ 

Jim leaned back with a deep sigh. 

‘It is illogical that it upsets me,’ Spock said. ’They are ruthlessly violent. Their ideology as a whole threatens countless lives. This, on the other hand, is directed at a small minority. It should not matter.’ 

‘But it does matter!’

Spock did not answer, only watched a point on the far wall. Jim restrained himself, trying to put his thoughts into words. 

‘It matters to you, and to me,’ he said. ‘But it matters to everyone too. This is a part of Vulcan culture – one that Vulcans are proud of. Never mind how few people it affects. If you take away the dignity of one person, it affects everyone else.’ 

Spock considered it. 

‘“The spear in the other’s heart is a spear in your own”,’ he quoted. 

‘Exactly.’ 

Something like a smile passed over Spock’s face. It disappeared quickly. As if to hide that fact, he rose and crossed to the window. 

‘Tensions will escalate, after today’s attack. It is possible that the Vulcan government will decide to act.’ 

‘Isn’t that a good thing?’ Jim asked. 

The red light played over Spock’s face, deepening the creases in his skin. 

‘There has not been a war on Vulcan in two thousand years.’ 

Jim got to his feet. 

‘Is the government acting going to change whether there’s war or not?’ he asked. ‘They’re the aggressor. They killed innocent civilians – people whose only crime was to not agree with them. That’s an act of war.’ 

Spock was silent for a moment. 

‘The irony is that despite the violence they perpetrate, the Kesaya are pacifist in theory.’ 

‘Very ironic,’ Jim answered, not hiding his disgust. ‘How do they rationalise what they’re doing then?’ 

‘This is the last war. After this, there will be no need for violence.’ 

‘When everyone who disagree with them are dead, you mean,’ Jim said, ‘or so scared that they will not dare think for themselves.’ 

Spock’s shoulders slumped.

‘Yes.’

Jim sighed and rubbed his forehead, feeling bad. 

‘I’m sorry, Spock. I just can’t help getting angry.’ He crossed to the window to stand beside him. 

‘Anger is an understandable reaction,’ Spock said. The schooled mask had slipped now. ‘I am relieved that Doctor McCoy is unharmed.’ 

‘So am I.’ He put a hand on his arm. ‘Don’t work any more today.’ 

Spock shook his head. 

‘I cannot neglect my duties,’ he said. ‘I will likely receive more intelligence on the Shi’Kahr attack soon, and if the Vulcan authorities decide to admit what is happening, my role may become far more official…’ 

‘Spock,’ Jim said, firmly, grabbing him by the elbows. ‘Let’s get out of this damned study. Let’s go sit in the garden and play a game of chess. It’s not logical to overwork yourself, is it?’ 

Spock’s eyes softened.

‘No, it is not logical at all. A game of chess would be most agreeable.’ 

Jim smiled. Tentatively, Spock smiled back. In unison, they moved closer. Their lips met in a reconciliatory kiss. 

The silence was disturbed by the bleeping of the comm unit. Sighing with regret, Spock pulled away and crossed to the desk.

‘I’m sorry, Jim. Chess will have to wait.’ 

Jim sighed. 

‘Later today?’

The comm unit beeped again. Spock watched him for a long moment. Jim marvelled that anyone could see him and think him cold. His eyes were full of love. 

‘I will hold you to it,’ Spock said. 

‘Good.’ 

A third signal. Spock answered the call, while Jim left. 

For the rest of the day, he stayed close to the study, waiting for Spock to reemerge. The door remained closed. Sometimes he could hear him speaking on the comm unit, at times English, at times Vulcan. At other times, the study seemed blockaded by a wall of silence. Part of him wanted to knock and tell him to stop working and come be with him instead. In the large house, he felt lonely. Bones was still resting, and he did not want to disturb him – he clearly needed some time to himself. Amanda had withdrawn, to rest or to avoid company. While the sun set, Jim sat in the garden, watching how the colours of the sky changed. The Tellus roses slowly lost their colour, turning from pink to dusky grey. They closed their flowers, petals hugging together. In the distance, he could see the expanse of the Tanit desert. Jim sat there until it was too cold to stand. Once he went to bed, he fell into a fitful sleep. After hours of half-sleeping, half-waking, he was roused by the mattress shifting. He felt the heat radiating from Spock’s body. He did not say anything, only reach out for him. Spock returned the embrace. They folded their bodies together with ease, shaping around each other. Neither spoke. Before he fell asleep again, Jim felt how Spock planted a kiss on his shoulder, a tender, wordless apology.

***

When Jim woke the next morning, he was not surprised to find Spock’s side of the bed empty. What did surprise him was the light that filtered through the half-drawn blinds. He sat up and looked at the chronometer. It was far later than he had thought. In fact, he was not sure when he last slept this long. For decades, his sleep rhythm had been shaped by shifts. He must have been exhausted.

He was still rubbing the sleep out of his eyes when he walked into the dining room. McCoy was at the table, drinking coffee and reading.

‘Morning.’ 

‘Good morning,’ he said, putting the PADD aside. ‘You slept in.’ 

‘I know.’ Jim sat down and poured himself coffee. ‘I have no idea why. What about you?’ 

‘Woke up at dawn and couldn’t go back to sleep.’ 

‘Yesterday was a draining day,’ Jim observed. 

‘I can’t deny that,’ McCoy said. ‘I’m feeling better. That treatment they gave my ears have set in. Don’t worry about me.’ 

‘Too late, sorry,’ Jim said. He drained his coffee cup and filled it again. ‘Have you seen Spock today?’ 

‘Yes. He was already up making calls in his study when I got up.’ 

‘Is he still in there?’ 

McCoy shook his head. 

‘He’s meditating. He asked me not to disturb him – as if I would.’ 

Jim was glad to hear it. The clarity of mind that he got from talking about the things that bothered him, Spock got from meditation. He had a hunch that Spock had neglected that in the past few weeks. 

‘What are you thinking?’ McCoy asked, noticing the long pause. Jim shrugged. 

‘I just don’t like him working on this… whatever it is. I understand full well it’s important, but… I suppose I wish he wasn’t the best man for the job.’ 

‘Did you talk about it?’ 

‘Yes. We both wound up feeling bad, I think. I lost my temper. He was cross at me for losing my temper, and cross at himself for isolating himself. I’m cross at him for that too, but that’s what he does.’ 

‘Doesn’t make it a good idea,’ Bones said. 

‘No,’ Jim said with a sigh. ‘You were right yesterday. He’s emotionally invested in it. He even admitted it. Not just because of Valeris, and you for that matter. They’re a nasty piece of work, this group, and he’s spent the past eighteen months reading their supremacist drivel. It’s bound to upset him.’ 

He sank back in his chair, exhausted by the sudden flare of anger. McCoy pushed a bowl of yoghurt towards him. Murmuring thanks, he took it. As he ate, he watched his friend. It was clear from the way McCoy’s forehead creased that he was thinking. Then he shook himself, dismissing the train of thought. Jim had a feeling that he was replaying the events of yesterday in his mind. 

‘Have they been saying anything on the newsfeed?’ he asked. 

McCoy nodded. 

‘Thirty-nine dead. About sixty injured.’ 

‘But nothing about the Kesaya?’ 

‘No.’ 

‘What do you think is their reasoning for that? Are they keeping it quiet because they think they’re hoping to starve them of attention?’ 

McCoy shrugged. 

‘I have no idea. I’m not expert on these things, but from what I know groups like this thrive under the spot-light. That doesn’t mean that they’ll go away if you ignore them. It might even provoke them.’ 

‘Spock told me the authorities were afraid of Federation intervention.’ 

‘These damned isolationists,’ McCoy growled. Jim did not want to speak the thought, but not for the first time he wondered if Starfleet had gone wrong somewhere, to make people afraid of their presence. Was it only a bad reputation, or had they deserved it? 

‘Ignoring a problem doesn’t make it go away,’ he said instead. ‘If people aren’t aware of who these people are, they’re vulnerable to their recruitment efforts.’ 

‘That’s a thought,’ McCoy said. ‘What are the chances that the Vulcans are afraid that even talking about it might give them leverage?’ 

Jim shrugged. 

‘I don’t know. But I’d hope that they’d have more faith in people than that.’ 

Still, he could not be sure. It was far too easy to imagine clean-cut, engaging young people discussing politics and philosophy with their fellow students, slowly introducing new concepts, and logical argument by logical argument turning them over to their ideas. 

The sound of bare feet against the wooden floor came from outside the room. The door opened and Spock entered.

‘Good morning, Jim.’ He made his way to the table and instead of sitting down at once, kissed Jim on the side of the face. Jim grinned at the unprompted show of affection. 

‘Good morning to you too,’ he said as Spock sat down beside him. ‘I heard you’ve been busy.’ 

‘Indeed. I am sorry about the demands on my time.’ 

Jim shrugged. 

‘It’s not your fault.’ 

McCoy cut in. 

‘Spock, eat something.’ 

Spock gave him a withering look.

‘I do not need to be lectured, Doctor.’ Nevertheless, he helped himself to some fruit. 

‘Bones said you’ve been making calls,’ Jim said. 

Spock nodded, not looking up from the Vulcan persimmon he was peeling. 

‘Yes. The Federation has officially expressed their concern about yesterday’s events. Unsurprisingly, the Vulcan Council is not best pleased.’ 

‘Don’t they realise they’re trying to help?’ McCoy said. 

‘I believe the Council worries that the Federation is going to send – and I apologise – a ship full of impulsive humans and make the situation worse.’ 

‘Good thing they’ve got you, then,’ McCoy said. ‘You’ve never been impulsive in your life.’ 

Despite himself, Jim laughed. Spock looked unimpressed. 

‘They are not pleased with me either. Admittedly, they are not entirely aware the extent of my study, only that I have taken an interest in the Kesaya and have conferred with the president on the matter.’ 

Yet another aspect of why Spock was a natural choice to study the group struck Jim. 

‘I suppose that if you’d been human, the Council could have had you kicked off the planet.’ 

‘Indeed,’ said Spock. ‘But seeing as I am Vulcan, they have no such authority.’ 

‘And it’d look very bad,’ McCoy added. 

‘I am not certain the Council is concerned about public relations.’ 

‘They probably should be.’ 

‘Be that as it may, Doctor,’ Spock said. McCoy rolled his eyes. 

‘Well, I’m off to call Joanna,’ he said, standing up and taking his PADD. 

‘Say hello from us,’ Jim said. 

‘Sure thing,’ he said and left. 

Jim looked over at Spock, who caught his eye and bit into his persimmon. He was suddenly very glad Bones had gone.

‘You know, if you don’t peel them, the juice won’t go all over your hands,’ he said eventually. 

Spock smiled and, without losing any of his usual elegance, started licking the juice off his fingers. 

‘I never cared for the peel, and your reaction is entertaining.’ 

Jim guffawed. 

‘When did you turn into such a tease? I’m an old man, Spock. For all you know I’ll fall down dead if you keep this up.’

Spock smiled. 

‘I sincerely doubt it.’ 

Jim kissed him. The juice of the persimmon still coated his lips; the hand he took was sticky with it. Spock kissed back, fingers closing around his hand. 

‘Jim…’ Spock’s breath played over Jim’s face. For all the closeness, his tone was wrong. 

‘Is your mother standing the doorway?’ Jim asked. 

‘No.’ Spock drew away, but did not let go of his hand. ‘I have received new instructions. I am to conduct a survey of the Tanit desert.’ 

Jim stared. It took a huge effort to speak. 

‘ _What _?’__

__Spock let go. He wiped his hands on a napkin and then, leaning back, interlaced his fingers. It was a pose that usually looked relaxed, but now it seemed defensive._ _

__‘The president wants a first-hand account of what is happening. A more precise idea of the Kesaya’s land-gains would be most helpful…’_ _

__‘Is that worth risking your life for?’ Jim exclaimed._ _

__‘It is a survey, Jim. I do not mean that I am going to launch a one-man assault…’_ _

__‘Are they sending a ship? Giving you any kind of support?’_ _

__‘I will bring two employees of the interior ministry with me.’_ _

__Jim sank back in his chair, but he could not stay there. He got up and started pacing._ _

__‘This is insane.’_ _

__‘We need more information. We may understand their philosophy well, but this is not only going to be a conflict of intellects. We need tactical information.’_ _

__‘You can get that from long-range scanners from orbit! Use the satellites! Hell, send in an unmanned plane if you don’t want to go outside the atmosphere!’_ _

__Something, very quickly, sparked in Spock’s eyes – a flash of anger._ _

__‘We do not have the authority for any of those things,’ he said. His voice was cold._ _

__‘Then get it!’_ _

__Spock got to his feet._ _

__‘This is not yet a military matter, but neither is it diplomacy. I am engaged in espionage. Vulcan is a sovereign planet – like any Federation member, it has the right to self-govern. We are violating that right.’_ _

__‘Spock, marching into enemy territory is suicide! This is just one of your stupid stunts…’_ _

__Again, that flash of anger._ _

__‘Jim, you are not my superior officer anymore. I have my orders. My own opinions of them are irrelevant.’_ _

__For a second, Jim thought that Spock would storm off, but he stood still and stiff, an immovable object made flesh. He wanted to think of a retort to throw and storm out himself. Then the anger melted away. He sat down heavily. There were tears in his eyes._ _

__‘Spock…’_ _

__Spock bowed his head and looked away._ _

__‘This is a stupid plan,’ said Jim._ _

__‘Yes,’ Spock said. ‘But it is the most inconspicuous. The Kesaya take many of their recruits from the universities. They will have advanced technology – they will know if they’re being scanned. A small landspeeder with three persons in it they might notice, but it will not seem threatening. We cannot take the risk of escalation.’_ _

__He looked at him now. His face strained against the emotions, which Jim could still see in him – anger, shame, desperation._ _

__‘Won’t it happen anyway?’ he asked, no longer belligerent. His outburst had drained him._ _

__‘Every day – every hour – we gain, we have more time. Not negotiating with them, but finding a way for the Federation to help. We need that time.’ Spock sank into his chair. For a few moments, they both sat, deflated and upset, not acknowledging each other. Jim was the one to reach out. He picked up Spock’s hand and, leaning forward, kissed it. Spock made a sound, half surprised gasp and half sob. Jim looked up at him._ _

__‘I’ll come with you.’_ _

__Spock shook his head._ _

__‘No. Your presence would raise suspicions, and the desert climate is too harsh.’_ _

__Jim knew Spock was right, but he hated it. Right now, he did not feel his usual mild dissatisfaction but real, burning hatred at being retired while Spock was still involved in these matters. He did not like the idea of being old, but some part of him wanted them both to be old together. Would that ever happen? Would they ever have that life, sitting in their proverbial rocking chairs and enjoying the silence? Even if they got there, would they both be so desperate for something to do that they made each other miserable? And if it never happened, was this what they would be like? Spock trying to do his duty, and Jim only responding with anger?_ _

__‘Jim…’_ _

__Jim took Spock’s hand between his two own and looked him in the eye._ _

__‘Let me help.’_ _

__He saw how the last shred of resistance disappeared._ _

__‘Of course,’ Spock said._ _

__‘Just tell me how.’_ _

__‘I would appreciate help with the preparations. But before that, would you speak to McCoy? I am not certain I can take his reaction at present.’_ _

__Jim pressed his hand. He could not blame him._ _

__‘I’ll take care of Bones. You’ll need to tell Amanda, though. She should hear it from you.’_ _

__‘Later,’ Spock said. ‘I will be in my study.’_ _

__He rose, but Jim kept his hold of his hand, stopping him._ _

__‘Spock…’_ _

__Spock met his gaze, waiting for him to speak. All the things he had wanted to say were gone. For one, uncharacteristic moment, he felt he would trade anything for a dull, ordinary togetherness. In the end he simply held his gaze for a little longer before slackening the grip around his hand. Spock let his hand slip out of his grip, but slowly, as if regretting he had to leave. The contact broke, and he was gone._ _

____

***

When Jim stepped into the study, he had to admit he felt shaken.

‘How did it go?’ Spock asked. He was seated on the floor, with maps, PADDs and notebooks spread around him. 

‘About as well as you’d expect.’ Jim picked his way through the material and pulled up a chair. Spock may be able to sit on the floor, but he was not going to subject his knees to that. ‘He’s still shaken after yesterday.’ 

‘That is only natural.’ Spock consulted his notes and made a mark on the map. Jim was content watching him for now. The silence was welcome after Bones’ explosive reaction. When he replayed the argument, he realised that McCoy had made much the same arguments that he himself had made. They had both responded with outrage, either unwilling or unable to see the logic despite the risk. Jim knew exactly what Bones thought of whenever he heard arguments of individual sacrifice for the greater good. It was the same as Jim saw behind his eyes every time that concept was hinted at, every time Spock took risks, every time he felt that gut-wrenching worry of losing him. 

In the end, he had used the same arguments as Spock had. ‘I’m not his captain – I can’t tell him what to do. He takes his orders from the president and the diplomatic corps. He has to do it. What do you want us to do – hypo him and tie him to a chair?’ McCoy had muttered that it didn’t sound like a bad idea to him, but had let it go. 

Jim leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. 

‘That’s the Tanit desert?’ 

‘Yes.’ Spock indicated a circular structure on the map. ‘This is Shi’Kahr. We are here.’ He moved his finger a few centimetres to the right and pointed to where the estate lay. ‘This is the Shi’Kahr plains. The desert starts beyond the Hinek arête, here.’

‘And you said they controlled – what was it? Two thirds of the desert?’ 

‘Somewhat more. The most likely estimate is that they have control of around 850 000 square kilometres.’ 

‘Do we know anything of their troop numbers or their capabilities?’ Jim asked. For all the horror of the situation, he felt excited. However interesting the ideology was, what he knew about was tactics and strategy. Here he could help. 

‘Uncertain. They give their number as 10 000, but it is in their interest to inflate it. However, I have been able to confirm several thousand individuals who have left their lives to join them, so it is possible they are correct. As with numbers, we are not certain about their access to weapons, but I have no doubt that they could create their own.’ 

‘Isn’t the Tanit desert very sparsely populated?’ 

‘Correct.’ 

‘So why go to the trouble of occupying it?’ 

‘It serves as an important trade route.’ Spock traced his finger over the map, from Shi’Kahr, over the mountain range and through the desert, off onto the floor. ‘The cities of Katakh and Ti’sahl lie approximately here and here.’ 

Jim remembered now. He had read about the ancient artisans of Katakh and seen the small netsuke-like sculptures in the museums in Shi’Kahr. Ti’Sahl was built around an oasis, and was where much of the irrigation systems still used on Vulcan had first been developed. He recalled the vividly painted vessels that had been used to transport olives, grains and edible leaves soaked in oil across the desert hundreds of years ago. At the fruit markets of Shi’Kahr, you could still see the whicker baskets, woven in four differently coloured stalks, filled with persimmons, desert-apples and _sinkhala_ fruits.

‘This is the old caravan route.’ 

‘Yes.’

‘Is that intentional?’ Jim asked. 

‘They are doubtlessly aware of the cultural significance,’ Spock said. ‘But it allows them control over some of the trade – by persuasion or violence, I do not know.’

‘How do people feel about them in Katakh and Ti’Sahl?’ 

Spock shrugged. 

‘Unclear. It is difficult to find out without going there. Even now, it is an infrequently travelled route.’ 

‘Can you get there from Shi’Kahr without going through the desert? Except for beaming, of course?’ 

‘It is possible, but not without a great waste of fuel and time,’ Spock answered. Jim leaned back. 

‘So any trade coming in from those two cities have gone through the Kesaya.’ 

‘Most likely.’ 

He bit his lip. Shi’Kahr only grew about half the food it needed in the irrigated fields around the city; the rest came from outside. If half the food supply would suddenly disappear… 

‘Jim.’ 

He shook himself. The thought of Tarsus IV was gone. He could feel Spock watching him, looking for signs of distress. He met his eye, assuring him. 

‘So what’s your plan?’ he said briskly. 

‘There are a number of locations that I would like to observe, at least from a distance. The Chisa barchans and the Tanit foothills would both have strategic value.’ He pointed them out. ‘The most logical course of action would be to travel north-east, following the foothills. I would like to see the Danga caldera, as I believe it would make a good exercise ground, but it is on the west side of the desert, and it would be too hazardous to try to reach it. It may be easiest, after reaching the barchans, that we turn east, and then go back south through the foothills…’ 

A knock on the door interrupted him. They both looked up; the person did not wait for an answer before opening the door. McCoy stood in the doorway, a controlled, intense look on his face that Jim had seen many times before. He spoke before either of them had time to ask. 

‘You should check the newsfeed.’ 

Spock swiftly got to his feet and crossed to the desk. With a few taps, he called it up on the computer. Reading the text on the screen, he leaned against the desk, looking slightly grey. 

‘Three bombs have gone off in Katakh in the last hour,’ he said, translating the article as he read. ‘May be connected to the bombing in Shi’Kahr. Casualty numbers are not conclusive, but estimated to…’ He paused for a moment. ‘Nine hundred. Three hundred and seventy are confirmed dead, but it is expected to rise.’ 

Jim rubbed his face, feeling helpless. Spock continued to read. 

‘The first bomb was detonated at the Katakh Institute of Music. The second attack, shortly afterwards, consisting of two timed bombs, took place at the central market. The third targeted a wedding feast.’   
He swayed on his feet, enough that one of his hands, planted against the desk, slipped a little. Jim got to his feet, but McCoy reached him first. He took a decisive hold around Spock’s shoulder and made him sit down. For a long moment, they were silent. 

‘They will release a statement,’ Spock said finally. ‘They will claim these attacks too.’ 

‘Looks like you were right, Bones,’ Jim said. ‘They don’t like being ignored.’ 

McCoy sighed and shook his head, not to negate his point but to show his confusion at the situation. 

‘Three hundred and seventy people. It’s insane.’ 

Jim did not know what to say. Spock was still staring at the screen. The two humans exchanged looks. McCoy reached over and turned the unit off. 

‘Doctor…’ 

‘No,’ McCoy said. ‘If you’re going to go on this idiotic mission of yours, you’re at least going to listen to me. You need a break from this. Get out of here. Just leave the stuff on the floor, you can come back to it later. But you _need_ to clear your head. Not by meditating on it, but by some ordinary human interaction.’ 

‘There is no time,’ Spock said, not even bothering to comment on the term “human interaction”. 

‘You have to find it, Spock. It’s not even noon yet and you already look ready to faint. Go help Lady Amanda with the roses. Play some chess. You can even help me with the crossword if you want. But fresh air, rest, distraction. Jim, I’m counting on you to enforce it if he doesn’t comply.’ 

‘Sure,’ Jim said. McCoy turned to leave, but paused in the doorway. 

‘Just take care of yourself, Spock. Don’t make us worry about you.’

He left. Spock leaned back in his chair, clearly relieved that the doctor was no longer watching him. Jim put his hand on his shoulder. 

‘What do you say, Spock? Shall we play that game of chess you promised me?’ 

It took a moment for him to answer – Jim could see the pull of duty in his eyes. Then he rose, slowly, to avoid getting light-headed.

‘I believe we do not really have a choice,’ he said, but smiled.

***

The departure of the expedition had been set to the morning two days after the Katakh attacks. The day before, they spent in the study, compiling packing lists and drawing up maps, agreeing on call-in protocols and calibrating communicators. McCoy stayed at home, claiming that his colleagues at the Science Academy thought he needed more rest. Jim doubted it had been their idea. The doctor spent much of his time skulking around the study, watching Spock hawkishly for any reason to tell him to rest. Whether through self-control or through genuine improvement, Spock seemed much more collected. Eventually McCoy decided to put his energy elsewhere, and instead went to assemble a medical kit which he insisted Spock bring, even if one of the people coming with him was a medic.

T’Kuht rose, and the sun set. They had decided to retire early. The expedition would leave at dawn, to cover as much ground as possible before the heat made travelling difficult. Jim was already in bed when Spock entered. He closed the door carefully and left his shoes there. His bare feet against the wooden floor made only the slightest of sounds as he went about his routine. When he got into bed, Jim turned to face him. 

‘Everything ready?’ 

‘Yes.’ 

They moved, settling close to one another in the middle of the bed. Jim ran his hand over Spock’s hair. 

‘I’ll miss you.’

‘It’s only four days,’ Spock said. His hand, far warmer than a human’s, slipped under Jim’s vest and rested on his chest. ‘This is no different from what we have always done. As you so often said, risk is our business.’ 

‘It’s not anymore,’ Jim said, resting his head against Spock’s. ‘We’re old. We should leave this to the kids.’ 

Through the darkness, he could see a flash of sadness on Spock’s face. 

‘I am three years your senior,’ he said, ‘but I am not as old.’ 

‘Maybe,’ Jim said. He rolled onto his other side, so Spock would not see his face. He felt him moving too, his body only inches from his. His arm came to rest around his waist, but he did not come closer. 

Jim was not sure if they had actually discussed it, but he was certain that Spock knew what he was thinking. No one knew if Spock’s life expectancy was that of a human or a Vulcan. He definitely retained more of his strength, speed and stamina than Jim did, but he was not as young as a Vulcan of the same age. His face showed signs of ageing: the deepening lines around his mouth, the green under the thinning skin, the eyes that had gone from brown to almost black. His health was not as good as it once had once – his bones were not as dense, and he had the beginnings of the same heart condition that had plagued his father. Despite that, he was in good shape, far better than Jim, with his arthritis and high blood-pressure. It was a cruel reminder that for all their similarities, they were different. Jim was not sure which felt worse – the fact that it was perfectly possible for Spock to live fifty, seventy, even ninety years without him, or the risk that he might die before Jim after all.

Sensing his thoughts, Spock hugged him, nuzzling his neck. 

‘Don’t think of such things,’ he whispered.   
‘Can’t help it.’ Jim blinked a few times; he was falling asleep. ‘It’s only four days.’ 

‘Yes,’ Spock said, holding his tighter.

***

The early morning was cold, cold enough to make Jim shiver. McCoy’s teeth were chattering.

‘Let’s go inside,’ Jim said. McCoy, not trying to answer, just nodded and they made their way into the house again. Down on the driveway, beyond the veranda and the cliffs, Spock was overseeing the packing of the landspeeder. He would come up to say goodbye, but Jim could not stop himself from looking over his shoulder at him. He struck an imposing figure in his desert-gear, directing his two subordinates. 

The hall was dark. Just by the door sat Lady Amanda, still in her night clothes but with her headscarf pinned in place. Jim sat down beside her and took her hand. She pressed his and leaned her head against his shoulder. She was usually such a charismatic presence that it was easy to forget how old she was. In the half-light of the morning, she looked every one of her ninety-five years. Jim was not sure whether the way her eyes looked was wateriness or tears. As he had expected, she had been unhappy to hear about Spock leaving, even for a few days. They had purposely downplayed the connection with the recent attacks. She had been worried enough for McCoy after the first one – she did not need the added strain of worrying about her son. As they sat in silence, waiting for the goodbye, Jim reflected how odd it was, three humans in a Vulcan home, the master already away on a diplomatic mission, his son leaving also. He wanted to tell her something – ‘he’ll be fine’, ‘he can take care of himself’. They all felt like platitudes. However much he trusted in Spock’s abilities, he still worried. He just pressed her hand a little harder. 

Soon, they could hear the sound of boots against the gravel path. Jim helped Lady Amanda to her feet as Spock stepped in. 

‘All is ready,’ he said. ‘We will leave at once.’ He turned to Amanda. ‘Mother.’ He bent low and kissed her on the cheek. Jim saw how her face tensed at this unusual tenderness. 

‘Look after yourself, Spock,’ she said. She took his face between her hands and looked at him for a moment. Then she smiled and surrendered her grip of him. McCoy stepped forward and patted Spock on the back. 

‘Good luck.’ 

‘Thank you, Doctor.’ 

Then he turned his gaze at Jim and stepped out of the door. Jim followed. They stood on the porch, side by side, aware of each other and the mission ahead. There was no reason for them to step outside to say goodbye, but both felt the need for that moment of silent deliberation, of feeling that they were a command team and this was just another planetary mission.

Spock moved first, extending two fingers. Jim placed his two first fingers against his with almost ritual slowness. They stayed like that for a few seconds. Then Jim let his hand fall. He stepped closer, put his hand on Spock’s neck and kissed him. Spock kissed back, his fingers closing around his arm. For a moment, Jim could sense desperation in them both of a kind he had thought they had outgrown. It was the kind of feeling he had carried with him during the early years of their relationship, that it might all be about to end. 

Jim was the one who broke the kiss. He touched Spock’s face and smiled. 

‘See you in four days.’ 

Spock nodded. 

‘Take care of mother – and yourself.’ 

‘Be careful.’ 

‘I shall try.’ 

He stepped away, letting his hand linger on Jim’s arm a moment longer. With a final glance, Spock turned and walked down the path. The two other Vulcans, who had unabashedly been watching them, climbed into the landspeeder now. The motor gave a roar, and the vehicle rose off the ground. Spock covered the last few yards at a run. He did not so much climb as vault into the landspeeder. They set off. Jim raised his hand in goodbye. He caught a glimpse of Spock raising his hand, and then he was gone. 

Jim’s hand dropped. He stayed on the porch for a minute as the sound of the engine moved further away. Finally he could not hear them. Instead, a lark started singing. He stepped back into the house. It seemed empty, as if everyone, not just Spock, had left. 

He found McCoy in the dining room, having breakfast. 

‘They’re off, then?’ he asked. 

Jim nodded and sat down. 

‘Where’s Amanda?’ 

‘She went back to bed,’ McCoy said. ‘Can’t blame her. I half want to do the same, but it’s time I go back to the Science Academy.’ Jim murmured something indistinct, not sure himself what to say. ‘Do you have plans for today?’ 

‘Not really,’ Jim said. He started assembling his breakfast, but without much enthusiasm. 

‘Come into Shi’Kahr, then.’ 

‘And sit in on a medical seminar? No thanks.’ 

‘I didn’t mean that. I know a nice place that makes actual coffee.’ He looked down into his cup. ‘I’m flattered they keep trying, but this does not qualify.’

‘Maybe.’ 

‘A change of scene might do you good. You’ve barely left the grounds for weeks.’ 

‘No, you’re right,’ he said. ‘I’ll come along. Real coffee sounds like a good idea.’

***

An hour later, they stepped out of the air-car that had taken them into the city. McCoy showed him where the café he had mentioned and said a quick goodbye before hurrying away in the direction of the Science Academy. It was strange, Jim thought as he entered the café, that an institution that had caused one of his friends so much pain now was making another so happy. It was good to see McCoy enjoying retirement, but at the same time it irked him. McCoy had always dreamed of a life dirtside – he was not a military man at heart. Jim wished that he could be the same.

The café was decorated in a Vulcan modernist style, with light wood and greenish marble. It was the kind of hip place Jim would have avoided in San Francisco as he would likely run into a great number of cadets who would be embarrassed to see him in their spare time. The clientele here was young – many sat with PADDs and lecture notes, clearly studying. The staff juggled their tasks with ease. The girl at the till was making notes in between customers; Jim caught glimpse of them later as he paid and saw that they were mathematical formulas. Apparently even Vulcans worked their way through college. The barista who was manning the coffee machine worked at an impressive speed, all while talking to what had to be a regular. Had they been human, they would have smiled and joked. Even without such emoting, they were sympathetic, and had the grace not to switch into English when he ordered in bad Vulcan. After thirty years of trying, he had still not got past transactional dialogues and archaic poetry.

He settled at a corner table with his coffee as well as a copy of an English-language paper of the type that most planetary metropolises had. He recognised the kind of reporting that filled most of today’s issue. Now that two days had passed since the attacks in Katakh, there was time to reflect upon them. The first two pages was all facts and maps, outlining everything that had been released to the public. Jim read every word and pored over the map of the city, measuring the distance between the sites. He wondered if the bombs had been remotely detonated or if it had been done manually. All they seemed to know for sure was that the attack at the market had been done on a timer. The first caused enough devastation, but the second explosion, timed to take place half an hour after the first, had killed far more people, plenty of whom were paramedics. It was the deadliest attack of the three. The only photograph on that page was from the aftermath of that attack. Little could be seen through the thick cloud of grey smoke. A woman, caught in the foreground of the picture, pressed a handkerchief over her nose and mouth. Her eyes were green and irritated, her cheeks wet with tears from the smoke and the shock. Her dark hair was speckled with paint-flakes from the rubble.

The next few pages were not about the bombings, but the victims. The faces of the dead looked up from the paper. There was a stately-looking doctor, her haughty expression contrasting with the five earrings she wore. She had heard the first explosion in the market and had come to help. The second bomb had killed her. Jim thought of McCoy. He had said that he had tried to help the wounded after the explosion in Shi’Kahr. If there had been a second bomb there… He pushed away the thought and continued reading. Beside the doctor, there was a photograph of a family, a young mother and father with a toddler. In the picture, the little boy was clearly trying to keep a straight face, but still looked tired and petulant. It said that the child’s name had been Talok. Jim knew that word. It meant “precious”. 

There were so many more. A promising dulcimer player had been killed in the attack against the Institute of Music. In the photograph they had printed, he sat with his instrument, eyes hooded, deep in concentration. Pictures of his classmates, many photographed with their instruments, surrounded him – a young woman, her delicate hands poised to play her lyre; a lute player, despite her young age already with her hair covered to show she was married; an aspiring composer, sporting an asymmetrical haircut that made Jim wonder if there was such a thing as Vulcan punks. All of them dead. The next page bore photographs of the couple whose wedding feast has been bombed. Jim read the article with a combination of morbid curiosity and a wish to know the dead. They had been a tailor and a irrigation mechanic. Their stance in the photo was formal, but Jim thought they looked happy. They had both died of their injuries, several hours after the explosion which had killed most of their relatives. 

Jim closed the paper and folded it up so that all he could see was the weather report. He felt a lump in his throat. He had spent most of his life sending people to their death, watching people die, but the idea of civilians – families, couples, brave passers-by – dying in that way… That was different. He took his coffee cup between his hands and watched the people around him instead. Straight ahead of him sat a group of three, discussing something intensely. When one of them picked up a notebook, he saw that it was covered in sketches of molecules. At one of the window tables, two women sat, both with their hands folded, both looking solemn. Jim wondered what they were talking about. Relationships – their own or someone else’s? Their futures? Or the events of the past few days? In the span of four days, hundreds had died, more had been injured and maimed, and Shi’Kahr had been shaken to its foundations. He thought of what Spock had said about how the Kesaya targeted people to cause fear, but also showed off their own emotional control by torturing their own on camera. 

It was a natural response for any animal when faced with sudden danger to scream, run, lash out. Nevertheless, Vulcans were taught that displays of emotion were unseemly. Anyone impacted by the attack, whether directly or indirectly, would feel that their reaction was wrong and indecent. Jim remembered all too well the first time he had seen Spock cry. Afterwards, he had seen shame written all over his face. That idea that emotions were dangerous things to give into had almost torn them apart. For a few years, it looked like it had. Even if he had not been the one to leave, Jim still blamed himself for it. If he had done more to help him accept his feelings, perhaps he would not have had those gruelling years at Gol. Even if it was just a few hours since he saw him, he felt a deep stab of longing. He wished Spock was here now to put all the things he had read about into perspective. 

Jim looked at his watch. It was less than an hour until the call-in they had arranged. They had planned three call-ins a day, one in the early morning, the second just before noon, around the time when they would have to stop to rest while the sun was at its highest, and the last in the evening. He touched his pocket to make sure that the communicator was still there. As he retrieved a book to read while he waited, he took out the folder with the log-sheets and maps they had made up before Spock left. They were all there, in order. He put them back in his bag and put it against the wall so no one could reach it. 

He managed to read only a few pages of _Finnegans Wake_. The style confused him, and the buzz of conversation was distracting. A waitress came to take his empty cup and asked if he wanted anything else. He ordered another coffee. Despite his hopes, the drink did not help his motivation. Finally he took off his glasses and closed the book. Maybe it was a lost cause. He should read something lighter, like Takka k’Shang or Austen, or he might try to find a copy of _The Good Soldier_ or _The Magician of Lublin_ , books he loved. All of a sudden he felt homesick. If he had been in San Francisco, he would have walked around the bookshelves and run his fingers over the spines. He missed his leather-bound copies of Gibbon’s _Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_ , his well-thumbed paperbacks of Bradbury, Orwell and Boye, the slender quarto of _Eugene Onegin_ Spock had given him for his birthday last year. He would have to make do with what he could get hold of here for now. There must be a bookshop that sold Earth literature somewhere in Shi’Kahr where he might find something to read, and perhaps Lady Amanda had something to lend him. He might ask if she had a copy of Aristophanes’ Frogs. He had acted in it at the drama society at the Academy, and it still made him laugh.

The communicator in his pocket buzzed. Almost dropping his glasses in his haste, he fished it out and flipped it open. 

‘Unit one,’ he said, getting the folder out with his free hand. 

‘Unit two here.’ The sound of Spock’s voice, deep and warm, made him smile, but also made him miss him even more. ‘Do you read me?’ 

‘Yes, unit two.’ He had found the map. ‘What’s your reference?’ 

‘Current reference: three point two.’ 

‘Three point two – understood.’ Keeping the folder in his lap, out of sight, he found the reference on the map they had named thusly. He encircled it and dated it to indicate their current whereabouts. He could hear the sound of Spock’s breathing on the other side of the link. 

They had agreed to stick to a strict communication protocol – no names, under any circumstances. Those protocols were ingrained in his head after all these years, but he wanted to say his name. He wanted to hear him speak his. Perhaps Spock was thinking the same, because his response was a few seconds later than it should have been. 

‘Unit two out.’ 

The light on the communicator went out, and the sound cut short. Jim put away the folder and the communicator. They had not exchanged more than twenty words or so, but it was enough for now. Finishing his coffee, he rose and, with a polite nod to the staff, left. He wanted to roam around the city, to find his favourite places and catch a glimpse of old memories. If he had the time before meeting up with Bones, he would go to the Museum of Vulcan History and look at the items that had made the biggest impact on him. He would make sure that the helmets made from the tusks of a _vahkish_ , the vessels with the dancing maidens, and the two-handed shield engraved with prayers to the gods, were all still there. He wanted to commit all these things to memory. Perhaps, a small voice at the back of his head said, they would be gone tomorrow.

***

Jim’s days consisted of waiting, interrupted only by the short points of contact with Spock. Every time, they spoke less than a dozen words each. Every time, he was left feeling conflicted. The minutes just afterwards, the memory of Spock’s voice would motivate him enough to make him get up to walk around the garden or see if there was something he could do around the house. Then that feeling would wane, and instead be replaced by a mixture of longing and jealousy. It struck him on the second day that this was the first time since their retirement they were properly apart. It took longer for him to fall asleep when Spock was not there. Even the knowledge that he would come to bed soon was usually enough. Now, he lay wide awake despite desperately wanting to sleep.

Though he wished it was not the case, he also felt almost like he had been betrayed. Spock was out doing his duty, while he had been reduced to waiting at home, reading badly translated Vulcan novels and enduring inelegant games of backgammon with Bones. It felt unfair, even if he knew full well that these feelings made no sense. In the end, that anger simply circled back to longing. Being apart like this did not feel right. 

On the second evening of Spock’s absence, just after the last call-in of the day, Jim entered the living room to find his friend and their hostess there. McCoy was sitting in an armchair, snoring softly, his hands folded over his stomach and his head sunken against his chest. Lady Amanda sat at the window with a skein of yarn. Jim crossed to her. 

‘Do you want a hand with that?’ 

‘Oh yes please,’ Amanda said, her voice hushed so as not to wake McCoy. Jim pulled up a chair. 

‘Just tell me what to do.’ 

‘Hold your hands up. Yes, like that.’ She put the skein around his wrists, found the end of the yarn and started making it into a ball. ‘Keep it a little tighter.’ Jim moved his arms apart a fraction. ‘Good.’ 

‘This is very soft,’ he said, looking at the yarn. He had never seen an animal with wool that colour, but it did not look dyed. 

‘It’s Andorian goat,’ Amanda said. ‘It was a gift from Sarek.’ 

‘It’s beautiful,’ Jim said, always a little bemused at the concept of Sarek giving thoughtful presents. 

‘It knits up very nicely,’ she said. The ball of yarn was already large enough that she could only fit part of it in her hand. Still she worked quickly, following the yarn around and rolling it up. ‘You’re getting the hang of this,’ she said, nodding at how Jim moved his hands as she pulled at the yarn. ‘When Spock was little, he would help me with this. He’d sit there with yarn all over his little arms.’ She smiled. ‘He would complain that it tickled, but he’d still help.’ Jim smiled as well at the image her words conjured up. Amanda’s smile faded, other thoughts occluding the happy memory. ‘When he left to go to the Academy, I had to find another way of doing it. I would try to put the skein on the back of chairs, or around my feet.’ 

‘Couldn’t Sarek help?’ 

She shrugged. 

‘He was away a lot, and he could not stand how warm his wrists got.’ 

‘Lucky I’m here to help, then,’ Jim said. She smiled at him. 

‘Yes.’ 

‘You must miss him.’ 

‘Oh yes.’ She looked out of the window, as if she might find some clue of when her husband would return. ‘But before you leap to conclusions, he dislikes it just as much as I do. I know you and Sarek haven’t always seen eye to eye.’ 

‘I have the upmost respect for Sarek,’ Jim said. ‘My only problem with him is how he used to treat Spock.’ 

‘Well, he’s changed,’ Amanda said. ‘For the better. And you’re part of that, you know.’ Jim snorted. ‘I mean it. He holds you in high regard.’ 

‘His words?’ 

‘Yes.’

‘Well,’ Jim said, ‘That’s high praise indeed.’ 

Amanda smiled. 

‘It is.’ 

They sat in silence for a while as Amanda continued her work. The sound of McCoy’s snores was the only thing to hear. Then Amanda spoke again, smiling at the memory. 

‘I’Chaya loved to play with balls of yarn. He was like a cat – in more ways than one. He’d chew through it and ruin it. He’d get it caught around his legs and run around, and there’d be yarn running all around the house. And Spock would run after him, trying to catch up with him to get him lose, which would just make I’Chaya run faster.’ They both laughed. It took some time for Amanda to calm down. Eventually she wiped her eyes and took a deep breath. ‘Spock loved that _sehlat_.’ 

Jim watched her, considering whether to voice his observation. 

‘You miss it, don’t you?’ he asked. ‘Spock, being a child.’

‘Of course,’ Amanda said. ‘It’s difficult not to. Not all of it, of course. There was much of it that was very difficult. He struggled – not because of any fault of his own, of course. A Vulcan education was not easy on him.’ 

‘The first time we met, you said that the Vulcan way was better than ours,’ Jim said. ‘Do you still think so?’ 

Amanda shook her head firmly. 

‘No. I was wrong. How could I not be? I didn’t realise then how much pain it caused him. But after he resigned from Starfleet, when he decided to go through with the kolinahr…’ She paused to compose herself. ‘Perhaps it makes me seem terrible, to remember the happy times when things seemed simple.’ 

‘No, it doesn’t,’ Jim said. ‘Not at all.’ 

She gave him a look of gratitude. 

‘I think it’s an unavoidable part of being a parent – becoming nostalgic,’ she said. Jim thought he managed to hide his first thought, but it must have shown, because her eyes softened. She put down the ball of yarn and pressed his arm. ‘I don’t think it ever stops being difficult.’ 

Jim shrugged. 

‘I suppose I have regrets too. I wish I could have known David better. Carol was well within her rights not to want me around, but…’ 

‘There are no rules about what we regret,’ Amanda said. She pressed his arm tighter for a moment and let go. Jim decided to change the subject. 

‘You shouldn’t have to be alone when Sarek is off-planet,’ he said. ‘What if you got a pet?’ 

‘I don't know,’ Amanda said. ‘Perhaps. It’s a shame about the invasive species regulations. I would love to have a cat. Not that a cat would enjoy this climate much…’ 

‘You could get a _sehlat_.’ 

She smiled at him. 

‘And undo all this work?’ she said, holding up the ball of yarn. 

‘I’m sure there are upsides,’ Jim said. ‘After all, _sehlat_ cubs are able to steal even the hardest of Vulcan hearts.’ 

Amanda started laughing. 

‘Oh, you have no idea,’ she said, stifling it to a giggle. ‘He’d never admit it, but Sarek can’t resist them.’ She leaned back in her chair, laughing again. ‘Whenever he sees a _sehlat_ cub, he just melts. He tries to keep it together, of course, but he’s very bad at it.’ Jim laughed too. He was unable to imagine Sarek reacting to anything cute, but made a mental note that perhaps getting Amanda a pet for her birthday. 

McCoy’s snores stopped. Jim could hear how his friend pushed himself up.

‘Had a good nap, Bones?’ he said. 

McCoy rubbed his eyes. 

‘I did until you woke me. I think I’ll just go to bed properly.’ 

‘Good night, then.’ 

‘Good night, Doctor McCoy.’ 

‘Night, Jim. Good night, Lady Amanda.’ 

He left. Amanda continued with her chore. Her hands moved around Jim’s, whipping the yarn up into the ball. They did not speak more, although on occasion, they would smile at each other. They got through another full skein of yarn before they retired. Sitting in silence with his mother-in-law, after speaking of difficult things and things of no consequence, Jim felt almost content. When he went to bed, he fell asleep faster than last night, despite the empty space beside him.

***

He woke suddenly, as if from a red alert siren or a loud explosion. His first impression was the darkness surrounding him, seemingly stretching on forever. His own panicked breathing was the only thing to be heard. He sat up and tried to calm himself down. Had he been dreaming? He must have.

Reaching for his dressing-gown, he threw off the sheets and got up. He felt shaky with adrenaline, as if the horror had been real, not dreamed. If only he could remember what… 

The bedroom suddenly felt small and constricting. He left it, not bothering to turn the lights on. Here, the light from T’Kuht shone through the blinds. In the half dark, he picked his way to the big hall. The light was different there. The night sky outside the bay windows was a darker red than in the day, but the light that shone into the house was silver. It drained the room of colour, changing it. It did not feel like the same room where he had sat only hours before, helping Lady Amanda with the skeins of yarn.

He stepped up to the window. It took him a moment to realise that the figure in a nearby chair was not just a discarded blanket. When his brain registered it correctly, he jumped, surprised. 

‘What are you doing up?’ he asked. In the dark, in just his pyjamas, McCoy looked old and thin. The way his head rested against the back-rest of the chair made the sinews in his neck stand out. 

‘I have a headache,’ he said, watching him through half-closed eyes. ‘And I can’t seem to get rid of it.’ 

‘That sounds terrible.’ 

‘It is.’ He closed his eyes and winced. 

‘Perhaps you should get it looked at,’ Jim said. 

‘Oh, I’ve looked at it,’ McCoy said. ‘Did it when the painkillers didn’t help. My scanner tells me I have no reason to be in pain.’ Before Jim could answer, he spoke again, perhaps to make him avoid the inevitable conclusion that it was psychosomatic. ‘Why are you awake?’ 

‘I don’t know. I must have had a bad dream…’ 

‘“Must have had”?’ McCoy repeated. 

‘I can’t remember dreaming. I just woke up. It was like when you dream you’re falling, and just as you hit the ground, you wake up. Only I can’t remember the dream part. It felt more like I was in a deep sleep.’ 

‘We’re both victims of our imperfect brains, then.’ McCoy made a grimace. ‘It feels like something’s clawing at the inside of my skull. I’m just going to take something to sleep, and this can play out without me.’ He got out of the armchair. ’Don’t stay up too long.’ 

‘I won’t. Night, Bones.’ 

McCoy left the room, walking far slower than he usually did. It felt like a reminder that for all his energy, the doctor was six years his senior, and at sixty-eight, it showed. Jim turned to lean against the window. In the dark, the rose-bushes looked like a tangled mass of thorns. Every shape and every shadow seemed threatening. He could feel his heart speeding up again, as though there was danger. He sat down in the chair that Bones had just left. Perhaps there’s something wrong with me, he thought. A rush of dread rose inside him. With an effort, he fought it down. 

After a few moments of grappling with himself, he concluded that this was in his mind. He was not dying. This was just panic. It felt much like what Bones had said, like something was clawing at the inside of his head. The panic felt somehow divorced from him. Maybe he had dreamed of Tarsus IV? Those were the kind of dreams he would wake up from in cold sweat. There were others too, of course. After their mission on Ekos, he had been plagued by nightmares where he heard soldiers walking back and forth outside his hiding-place, and he knew they would find him any minute now. Then there were the dreams of Spock dying, or being dead, dreams of watching and not being able to reach him.

But he could remember having none of those dreams now. What he felt now was something different. He rubbed his face and leaned back into the armchair. Perhaps he was just stressed and worried. He was probably making too much of this. 

Still he sat up for almost an hour, as if he was waiting for something. The house was quiet. None of the familiar sounds he was used to at night – the ticking of the antique clocks, the low hum of traffic, Spock’s measured breathing – was to be heard. Where he sat in the dark, grappling with a panic that did not seem to be his, it felt like he was the only living thing on the planet. When he eventually went back to bed, it was more of boredom with his own inability to draw a conclusion than tiredness. Yet he drifted off to sleep soon afterwards. He dreamt of sand, and the howling wind.


	3. Part III

Jim was roused from sleep by the light. He groaned and rubbed his eyes.

‘Good morning.’ 

He blinked. Lady Amanda was at the window, pulling back the curtains.

‘Good morning.’ Jim sat up and rubbed his eyes. 

‘Doctor McCoy told me you were up in the middle of the night.’ Amanda picked up the tray she had brought and carried it over to the bed. ‘So I thought I’d spoil you.’ 

‘That’s very sweet of you,’ Jim said, surprised. He lifted the coffee cup off the tray to make sure it would not spill when she placed the tray on the bed. ‘Thank you.’ 

‘You’re welcome,’ she said with a smile. 

‘Has Bones already gone, then?’ 

‘Yes, he was up early.’ 

‘What’s the time?’ Jim angled the chronometre so he could read it. For a moment he was afraid he would have slept through the early morning call-in, but it was still twenty minutes away. 

‘Early enough that you can have breakfast in bed,’ Amanda said. ‘I’ll leave you to it.’ She made her way to the door. 

‘Thank you, Amanda.’ 

She smiled and showed herself out. Jim leaned back against the bedstead, touched by her thoughtfulness. Breakfast in bed was something he barely ever had. Spock did not like it; humans may dislike crumbs in bed, but on Vulcan skin, such small annoyances were downright painful. It struck Jim that Amanda might have had the same experience, and this was a way to cheer him up while he was on his own. He sent a fond thought her way and tucked in. A few times, he glanced at the chronometre. The communicator was on the bedside table, the folder with the map on the floor. He picked it up and studied the diagram they had made showing the planned-out route. A number of dated strokes of the pencil showed the expedition’s progress. They were more or less on schedule by the looks of it. He put aside the folder and finished his coffee. The call should come any minute now. Putting aside the cup, he picked up the communicator. 

Jim watched the red sunlight fall across the room. A bird flew past the window, throwing a momentary shadow. The communicator lay silently in his hand. He glanced at the chronometre. He was only three minutes late. There was probably just something keeping him. Jim got out of bed, still with the communicator in his hand. The trajectory of the light had made him notice something on the desk – he had not paid much attention to things in the bedroom in the past few days. A scroll lay unrolled, held open by soft river rocks. The characters it bore were impeccably formed – each spine perfectly straight following the reeds of the papyrus, each spiral carefully executed. At its side, the inkwell was closed, but the brush, though cleaned, was not put away. Perhaps Spock had meant to come back to it and then not had time. Calligraphy was a form of meditation, and it could not be rushed. The text itself, Jim knew, was not considered as important as the form, but Spock had clearly considered his choice. Jim recognised it and smiled. Slowly, he read the carefully written Vulcan script to himself.

> When at a caravan they showed  
> a sea-shell the first time to me  
> I offered them both gems and gold  
> for that rare treasure of the sea.  
> I held it up to show the sun  
> this strange and unseen thing  
> from where the widest rivers run  
> and winds and seagulls sing.  
> I asked ‘whose was this pretty ear,  
> where was it he was born?’   
> They laughed at me and it was clear  
> they did so out of scorn. 
> 
> The merchants let me keep the shell –   
> I brought it home to you,  
> ashamed that I would have to tell  
> you what I thought was true.  
> I have it still, to keep in mind  
> the foolishness I said,  
> And one day, maybe, you will find  
> it when I’m gone and dead.  
> And in the shell you’ll find this note  
> that I planned out and that I wrote:  
> no pretty seashell can compare  
> to your visage, your eyes, your hair. 

Jim smiled to himself. He had always liked the poem. The language, though archaic and not entirely easy to understand, was beautiful. More than that, he enjoyed how – for lack of a better word – human the Vulcan narrator seemed, fascinated by something pretty and trivial. He had a feeling that that was the reason why Spock so often copied out the poem as a calligraphy exercise.

The communicator had not made a sound. He was more than ten minutes late now. It was not like Spock to be late. Jim worked to push aside the sense of dread that wanted to rise inside him. Instead, he remembered all the times he had been unable to contact the ship when he had promised he would. The communicator may be malfunctioning, they may be passing through a spot of interference, a weather phenomenon might disturb the transmission… There were all sorts of explanations. Jim told himself firmly: _He will call soon._

Only he did not. Jim waited at the desk, then carried the communicator with him into the bathroom to make sure he did not miss the call. As he showered, he turned off the sonic spray several times to check for the beeping of an incoming message. He got dressed and put the communicator in his pocket, returned it to his hand, put it back again. Taking the folder and a book he had no intention of reading, he went out into the garden. The weather was mild, cool enough to be pleasant. He sat down in his usual spot, but did not open his book. Instead, he took the communicator between both his hands and waited. An hour after the assigned time, he double-checked that nothing had gone wrong on his end. The communicator seemed to work perfectly. He was tempted to try to Spock himself, but they had agreed that Jim would under no circumstances contact him. The Kesaya was much more likely to notice a transmission penetrating their area than one emanating from it. 

Time passed. The sun climbed the sky, and its light grew warmer. The time for the noon call-in was closer now than the morning one. Jim walked through the garden, hoping for every breath that the call would come. It did not. He rubbed his palms together, as he was wont to do when worried. The sweat made his hands slip apart. It was getting too warm. He retreated into the shade, then onto the veranda. A servant brought him a pitcher of water, whether on his own initiative or Amanda’s, Jim did not know. Noon approached. 

And went. The servant came back with a tray of lunch. Jim tried to eat, but he found he could barely swallow. His stomach was in knots. The communicator was lying there like a dead thing. Every moment of silence dragged out and, when no noise interrupted it, gave way to the next long stretch of waiting. Staring at the device, Jim started biting his nails. It was a bad habit he despised, and one he usually kept at bay. For years, all through his captaincy, he had managed not to do it at all. In later years, it had crept up at him again at times of stress. Now, he tried to put his hands in his pockets, but it made little difference. His previous explanations – the broken communicator, the interference, the transmission jamming – were being overtaken by worse possibilities. He got up and went inside the house, clasping the communicator in his hand. If he knew more about the conditions in the Tanit desert, he might be able to narrow down the list of what might have happened. He had just opened the door to Spock’s study when the sound of his name stopped him. 

‘Jim?’ 

He turned. Amanda was standing just behind him. 

‘Hello,’ he said, trying to school his face so she would not see through him. 

‘Jim, are you alright?’ Amanda asked. 

‘Fine.’ He forced a smile and pushed the communicator into his sleeve, hiding it from view.

‘You’ve seemed pensive today.’ 

‘I’m fine,’ he said quickly. ‘I just slept badly. Excuse me, I have to deal with some business.’ 

She nodded, but looked rather exasperated. She must be used to men not telling her what their business was, but she had not become more tolerant of it. Jim ducked into the study and headed for the desk console. He had reviewed the weather reports with Spock before he left, and now he saw nothing out of the ordinary. There were no strong winds, no sudden drops or rises in temperatures, no brewing storms. He closed the computer down, not knowing whether he was relieved or more worried. He checked the time yet again. It was still two hours until the last time of contact of the day. They had talked about what would happen if Spock failed to be in touch, and had agreed that after three missed calls, Jim would take action. Now he wondered why they had said three – why not two? If they had, he could have acted already. However much he wanted, he would not. There might be a reason for this – perhaps he was fine, but in a situation where he had to maintain radio silence. That thought was not comforting, but at least it was something. 

It was approaching the time when Bones usually came back. Looking around for Amanda before stepping out into the corridor, Jim left the study and made his way to the front door. Again, he paused, looking around, but he could not see her in any of the windows facing this way. He made his way down the steep path, leading down to the road. Pebbles dislodged under his feet and skipped down before him. He looked over his shoulder to make sure no one watched him. Once he reached the road, he walked behind the cliffs to shield himself from view. He sat down on the ledge, the communicator in both hands. He waited, looking from the communicator to the road. After about half an hour, the sound of an air-car approaching could be heard, then the vehicle came into view. It slowed down and stopped almost exactly in front of Jim. The door opened. 

‘You must be the welcoming committee,’ McCoy said as he stepped out. He turned and said thanks to the driver, who acknowledged and drove off. Turning back to Jim, he registered his face. His smile died. ‘What’s happened?’ he asked. 

‘Spock hasn’t been in touch today.’ 

McCoy’s eyes grew. 

‘Not at all?’ 

‘No.’ 

He stepped closer. 

‘Does Amanda know?’ 

Jim shook his head. 

‘No. I didn’t want to agitate her.’ 

‘Good,’ McCoy said. He rubbed his chin, thinking. ‘What’s the protocol?’ 

‘If he misses three call-ins, I act. He’s missed two.’ 

McCoy’s jaw tensed. 

‘Two is bad enough.’ 

‘I know,’ Jim said. ‘But we made a decision. We have to stick to it.’ 

‘What if he’s in danger, Jim?’

‘An hour and a half longer won’t make a difference,’ he said, not believing it himself. 

‘A minute more or less might make all the difference!’ 

‘Bones, I’m supposed to contact the president’s office if he doesn’t get in contact. I can’t call her up before we are sure it’s necessary.’ He sighed. ‘I can’t just go on a gut-feeling.’ 

He saw how Bones’ opposition fell. 

‘I guess they might not really look kindly on it, coming from you.’

‘No,’ Jim sighed. ‘I have a bad track-record.’ 

‘We should go up to the house,’ Bones said. ‘It’d be better to continue this in the study.’

They made their way up to the house. When they reached the study, Jim took the chair at the desk. McCoy took a seat on the other side. It felt like there were things to discuss, but once they sat down, they fell into an uneasy silence. After some time, McCoy said: 

‘There might be an innocent explanation to this.’ 

‘I know,’ Jim said. ‘But what if it isn’t? What if there was an accident, or he was taken ill, or… something?’

‘If _he_ couldn’t make the call, surely one of the others would?’ 

‘I would hope so,’ he said. They had not discussed that. For a moment, he imagined the landspeeder hurtling back towards civilisation to find help. But if something like that had happened, wouldn’t they let them know? Besides, there was no reason why anything should happen to Spock. All things considered he was healthy. But Jim knew why he thought of that possibility. It seemed a far better explanation than that they had been ambushed by the Kesaya. 

‘What about weather disturbances? Could it mess with the transmissions?’ 

‘I checked. There’s nothing that should disturb communications.’ 

McCoy sighed and leaned back in his chair. They sat in silence. Jim watched the chronometre’s numbers changing over. Outside, the sun climbed downwards towards the horizon. The shadows lengthened, and the valleys between the summits darkened. The sky shifted colour. To the west, there was a blaze of orange and the brightest red. In the east, the colour was washing out, leaving blacks and greys. The chronometre ticked over to the full hour. Then, one minute passed. 

‘There,’ Jim said. ‘That’s three call-ins he’s missed.’ 

He picked a key out of one of the ornamental boxes on the desk and unlocked the middle drawer. The folder lay there, where he had seen Spock place it. McCoy got to his feet to watch as Jim opened it and fired up the computer console. There was not much written on the page, only a communication number and one word. Jim tapped in the number. The screen changed as the computer processed it. They sat in tense silence. Then the screen changed again, and the image of a human woman at a desk appeared. 

‘Who am I speaking to?’ she asked. She smiled politely, but there was no feeling there. 

‘My name is James Kirk. I am calling on behalf of S’chn T’gai Spock, of the diplomatic corps. I have urgent business with the president.’  
‘Do you have a call scheduled, Mr Kirk?’

McCoy scowled at that pointed use of “mister”. She had clearly done it on purpose. 

‘I don’t have a call scheduled – this is an emergency,’ Jim said. 

‘I’m sorry, sir, unless you have a call scheduled, there is little I can do.’ 

Jim pulled the folder closer to him and reread the word Spock had written down, to be sure he got it right. 

‘At least ask the president to speak to me. Tell her the word is “chrysanthemum”.’ 

The aide tilted her head and smiled the same blank smile.

‘I am sorry, Mr Kirk. I cannot possibly do that. Goodbye.’ 

‘Wait, listen to me…’ The call had been terminated. Jim slammed his fist into the desk, hard enough to make the ornaments jump and his hand pulse with pain. McCoy was still staring at the console in disbelief. Then he picked up the folder. 

‘Did you get the code-word wrong?’ 

‘No,’ Jim said, rubbing the side of his hand. A feeling of cold was washing over him. ‘I got it right. They just didn’t… didn’t accept it.’ 

‘Did Spock get it wrong?’ 

‘Impossible.’ He got to his feet and started pacing. He wanted to curse the presidential aide and rail against her idiocy, but the sense of dread was too deep for such trivialities. Fighting his way through the emotions, he made himself think. 

‘What do we do now?’ Bones asked. It took a moment for Jim to answer. 

‘The two people he went with – the bodyguard and the medic – were from the Vulcan interior ministry. We go to them.’ 

‘But Vulcan authorities haven’t wanted to acknowledge this as a crisis. Do you really think that they’ll…?’ 

‘I don’t know,’ Jim said, cutting him off. Then, pausing, he took a deep breath and repeated, calmer: ‘I don’t know, Bones. But it seems like the next best thing.’ 

‘Alright then.’ 

They left the study. McCoy took the lead, heading to the kitchen. There at the table, the family’s chauffeur was having dinner and reading the newsfeed. 

‘ _Savelam_ ,’ McCoy siad, ‘ _li’gash visar Shi’Kahraya._ ’

The chauffeur got up and wiped his lips on his napkin, seemingly not bothered to leave his supper. 

‘ _Ha veling, McCoy-hassu._ ’ 

Savel gestured to them to follow him through the back door and down to where the air-car was parked. He asked no questions about the lateness of their trip or of their purpose. All he did was ask where in Shi’Kahr to take them. The two humans did not speak during the ride. McCoy sat looking out of the window. Jim turned away also, but barely took in how the rocky outskirts of the Shi’Kahr plain changed to the verdant green of the irrigated area around the city. He thought of Spock, and what may have happened. Then he considered what to say at the interior ministry. He did not know who to talk to. They would have no reason to pay them any attention – neither of them had any political weight. The names in their passports may be familiar, but they were simply two retired off-worlders who had become well-known for more or less unfortunate reasons. They might take them as serious as the presidential aide had. 

Jim wished he could be the one to do the talking when they got to the ministry. Unless they found someone who spoke English, that would be impossible. Every time he heard McCoy speak Vulcan, he felt a twinge of envy. It seemed wrong that he, who was married to a Vulcan, should struggle, while McCoy spoke it as well as Lady Amanda. It had not been his choice to learn it, of course. It was simply one of the things which the _katra_ had left imprinted on his mind when it was extracted. It had taken McCoy years to admit to Jim the extent to which Spock’s knowledge had stuck. Even early on, he had suspected what had happened when he saw Bones reading medical journals in French as fast as he would read them in English. Bones had told him of the ease with which he both understood and spoke Vulcan only a few years ago, when he had related an argument between some diplomats he had overheard. It had not been until this stay on Vulcan that he had quite realised just how naturally it came to him. However envious he was of his nigh-native proficiency, Jim knew that he had paid a high price for it. The human brain had not evolved to house the essence of two people. A few times, Jim had caught sight of the things it had done to him – the far-away look in his eyes of seeing things that weren’t there, the cataleptic rigidness of his body, the inability to find words. All that kept it at bay was the lexorin that Jim knew he took daily, but that he would never discuss.

He shifted in his seat. It felt easier to worry about Bones than to worry about Spock. At least he knew what was happening with him. With Spock, he had no way to gauge what his reaction should be.

They slowed down. Savel parked neatly in front of a high modern building made from brushed rock. A meandering pattern ran over the windows as the only decoration. The two passengers climbed out.

‘What’s going on?’ Jim said.

A great throng of people took up most of the pavement in front of the ministry. The babble of angry voices was impossible to disentangle. The scene was disconcerting; Jim had never seen so many Vulcans angry and vocal before. He saw how the people closest to the entrance banged on the doors. On the other side, a security guard was clearly locking them. Through the windows, Jim could see civil servants watching the gaggle with furrowed brows. Protests could not be common in Shi’Kahr. 

McCoy stepped around Jim and went up to one of the people in the crowd. Over the shouts, Jim could barely hear him as he spoke to the man. From the look on his face as he answered the human’s questions, the man was trying his upmost not to let his emotions show. McCoy nodded and went over to Jim again. 

‘It’s all out in the open,’ he said. ‘The Kesaya released a tape of hostages. According to that man, they killed one of them on camera.’ 

Jim felt the bottom of his stomach fall out. 

‘At least they will have to respond now,’ he said. McCoy shot a look at the passive civil servants inside the foyer. 

‘Do they look like they’re responding?’ 

‘ _They_ are,’ Jim said, gesturing at the protest. Resistance was good. It put people on edge. Watching their outrage triggered something inside him – a memory of the panic he had felt. ‘I just realised something,’ he said under his breath. McCoy looked over at him, disturbed by his tone of voice.

‘What?’ 

‘Last night,’ Jim said. ‘I woke up. I thought I must have been dreaming, but it didn’t feel like I had.’ 

‘It was the middle of the night,’ Bones said. ‘You were confused.’ 

‘Yes, I was,’ he said. ‘I should have realised at once. I couldn’t figure out why those feelings didn’t feel like mine. It was because they weren’t mine. They were Spock’s. Something happened during the night.’ 

McCoy was silent for a moment. 

‘Do you know what?’ 

Jim shook his head. 

‘No. The impressions become less clear when he’s further away. I remember feeling panic. Startled, horrified panic.’ He rubbed his face and sighed. If he had realised this at the time, perhaps he could have done something… No, that was not true. 

‘Can you sense him now?’ McCoy asked. 

Jim turned his attention into his own mind. It felt like fumbling through darkness, but then he found the bond. It ran through his mind and beyond it. He could not reach through it, but he could tell it was intact. 

‘He’s alive.’ That was all he could say for sure. McCoy sighed. They were both thinking the same thing – whatever the identity of the person killed, it was not him.  
‘That’s something, I suppose.’

‘Bones,’ Jim said, interrupting him. ‘What the hell do we do?’   
McCoy sighed deeply, some of the anger slipping. 

‘I don’t know,’ he said. They stood in silence for a moment. 

‘We should contact Sarek.’ 

McCoy frowned.

‘Sarek’s on Antares IV. What can he do?’ 

‘He can talk to the minister – he can talk to the president. They’d listen to him.’   
‘And how long will that take?’ Bones asked. ‘They’re renegotiating treaties – he’s trying to avert another breakdown of their democracy. He doesn’t have the time to go deal with something else.’

‘His son has gone missing!’ Jim exclaimed. The flash of anger receded, and the truth of what he was saying struck him harder than before. He felt like he was falling with nothing to grab hold of. _This can’t be how it ends,_ he thought. Not separated, not ignorant of what happened. ‘What do we do?’ he said again. 

Bones stopped pacing. 

‘Come on.’ 

He half-ran to where the air-car was parked. Jim hurried after him. By the time he reached the vehicle, McCoy was already giving Savel instructions. The driver did not even wait for Jim to get his seat-belt on. As soon as he was seated and had closed the door, he pulled out onto the road. The engine, usually so quiet, gave a roar as they sped up. The streets of Shi’Kahr hurtled past the windows. Jim grabbed hold of the handle to steady himself. 

Within minutes, they slowed down. Jim recognised the building they pulled up at. It was huge, built in pale sand-stone and glass. They stopped just at a fountain, which in the middle bore a sculpture of a double-helix. They stepped inside. The Science Academy’s vast foyer somewhat resembled a spaceport, if rather less crowded. As it was evening, many of the students were gone, but some Vulcans remained. Their dark robes stood in stark contrast to the white interior. 

‘What are we doing here?’ he asked, hurrying after Bones. He found it difficult not to look around. High up on the wall facing the entrance was a mosaic of the IDIC symbol. He could make out every small stone, each one different. Then he would blink, and he saw the entirety again.

‘We’re going to see a friend of mine,’ Bones said. ‘Come on, this way.’ 

He led him to the far end of the hall, where lifts in glass shafts ran all the way up into the ceiling. Jim had never had trouble with heights, but the ascent still made him feel uneasy. Then they passed the level of the ceiling, and the lift’s lights switched on. They passed several floors before the lift stopped. McCoy led him down a corridor, and then another, and yet more. 

‘I never realised how vast this place was,’ Jim said. His knees were starting to hurt. 

‘We’re almost there,’ McCoy said. 

‘Will you tell me who we’re seeing?’ 

‘T’Paal. She’s an endocrinologist.’ 

‘And why are we seeing an endocrinologist?’ 

McCoy stopped. The sign on the door was marked with the name he had given. 

‘We’re not,’ he said. ‘We’re seeing someone who owns a landspeeder.’ 

He knocked on the door. Moments later, it slid open. McCoy stepped in, and Jim followed. The Vulcan at the desk got to her feet. Though her face remained schooled, Jim thought he could see a look of pleasant surprise in her eyes. Despite being shorter than the average Vulcan, she was a striking woman. Her black skin gleamed with a hint of green. Her clothes were simple, but her hair was elaborately braided. 

‘ _Na’shau n’odu, McCoy-hassu._ ’ 

‘ _T’Paal-hassu, n’odu kaing_ ,’ McCoy replied. Then he changed into English. ‘This is James Kirk. Jim, this is Doctor T’Paal.’ 

T’Paal held up her hand in salute. Jim made as good a ta’al as he could muster.

‘I know you by reputation, Captain Kirk,’ T’Paal said. ‘Would you be seated?’ 

‘Thank you.’ They sat down.

T’Paal rested her hands on the desk. They were remarkably long-fingered. 

‘This is an unexpected visit,’ she said. ‘What is its purpose?’ 

‘We’re in a fix,’ McCoy said. ‘That is, we have a problem.’   
T’Paal raised an eyebrow. McCoy cast a glance at Jim, urging him to speak. 

‘Spock, my husband, has gone missing.’ 

‘That is concerning,’ T’Paal said. ‘But is this not a matter for the police?’ 

‘No,’ McCoy said. ‘Not really.’ There was a moment’s silence. ‘Jim, tell her everything.’ 

The professional part of him felt it should object – T’Paal was a civilian, and they were meddling in Federation espionage – but the rest of him felt relief at the request. He was sick of this cloak and dagger nonsense. 

‘Spock has been investigating the Kesaya,’ he said. T’Paal’s jaw tensed. ‘You know of them?’ 

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I lost several of my best students to them.’ 

‘“Lost”?’ Jim said. 

‘They abandoned their studies to join them,’ she explained. ‘All higher institutions on Vulcan have struggled with the same problem. It has been primarily in Shi’Kahr, but it has happened all over the planet – even as far south as Hapaik, at the metrological centre there. We have been attempting to stop their reach within the Academy. I believe we have been successful now, but they seduced many excellent minds.’ 

The old word _brain-drain_ appeared in Jim’s mind. As the Kesaya grew stronger and bigger, the moderate Vulcan institutions were being bled of their most promising students. 

‘Go on, Captain Kirk,’ T’Paal said. ‘I did not mean for my explanation to distract you.’ 

‘It didn’t,’ he said, bringing himself back to the present. 

‘What were the circumstances of Spock’s disappearance?’ 

‘He left for the Tanit desert three days ago, together with two others. He has not been in contact for a whole day.’ 

T’Paal considered it. 

‘The Tanit desert is a harsh environment.’ 

‘We know,’ McCoy said. ‘That’s why we’re worried. We’ve tried to get help by the means we were told about, but we’re having no luck. Something has happened to him and the others. We need to do something.’ 

The Vulcan steepled her fingers, then trained her eyes on Jim. 

‘Before you go further, I wish to ask a question.’ 

‘Go ahead,’ Jim said. 

‘It may offend you.’ 

‘Just ask.’ 

‘Might he have abandoned his investigation to join the Kesaya?’ 

McCoy made a sound of disbelief. 

‘No,’ Jim said, reigning in the feeling of insult that he had been warned about. ‘There is no way that has happened.’ 

‘They are known for their persuasive arguments,’ T’Paal observed. 

‘With all due respect, Doctor T’Paal, it’s impossible,’ Jim said. ‘He has no sympathy for their ideology. He gave up on the strictest Vulcan teachings years ago. Logic doesn’t sway him.’ 

‘And they wouldn’t want him,’ McCoy said. ‘They’re genetic purists.’ 

‘He’s half human,’ Jim said. 

T’Paal nodded; of course she knew that.

‘And he has a human spouse,’ she observed. ‘A male spouse, at that. I recall a conversation with a doctoral student of mine on that topic. His disdain was… curious.’ 

Had the situation been different, Jim might have laughed at how foreign T’Paal found the concept of homophobia. He did not feel like laughing right now. 

‘We don’t know what’s happened,’ he said, ‘but something has. We need to do something.’ 

‘What type of assistance are you asking for?’ T’Paal asked.

‘You mentioned in passing once that you owned a landspeeder,’ McCoy said. ‘The big, desert-capable type.’ 

‘I do,’ she said guardedly.

‘We need to get into the desert,’ Jim said, picking up on Bones’ idea. ‘We know where the expedition was last night. If we can get there, we might find them.’ 

T’Paal rose and walked over to the window. The lights of Shi’Kahr stretched out beneath her. Beyond them there was darkness. 

‘You are aware what you are asking.’ 

‘It would be dangerous,’ Jim said. 

‘Landspeeders are not easy vehicles. They require two experienced pilots, and I doubt that both of you have the required knowledge.’

‘That might be true,’ McCoy said. T’Paal did not look at them. Her face may as well have been carved from stone. 

‘We don’t need to get all the way,’ Jim said. ‘We just have to get beyond the mountain ridge and into the desert. That terrain is impossible without a landspeeder. The rest we can cover by foot.’ 

She looked over at them now. Being under her gaze felt rather like being subjected to a medical scan. 

‘Neither of you are in peak physical condition,’ she said. 

‘We’ve been through worse,’ McCoy said.   
‘In recent years?’ 

‘We escaped from a Klingon prison planet only a year and a half ago.’   
T’Paal looked like she thought this was a joke that had gone over her head. 

‘This is a deeply flawed plan.’ 

Jim got to his feet. 

‘I know,’ he said. ‘But it’s all we have. Please, T’Paal, I… I’m begging you.’ He looked her in the eye. She furrowed her brows, but her gaze was curious. ‘I’m an emotional being. I can’t make the kind of arguments that might persuade you. But on our way here, McCoy called you his friend. Friends care for each other’s well-being. Spock is his friend. And Spock is my friend – my _t’hy’la_. And if that won’t convince you, I know this: Spock is the best chance we have to work against the Kesaya. He knows more about them than anyone outside their organisation. We need him.’ 

For a long moment, she watched him in silence. Then she spoke. 

‘You shall have my help.’ 

McCoy sighed with relief. 

‘It appears time is of the essence,’ she said. ‘I would suggest leaving at dawn.’ 

‘Thank you,’ Jim said, sincerely.

‘I will speak to my daughter and my nephew. They will take you. In the meantime, you must prepare. You will need rations, protective clothing, tools.’ 

‘I think we should get onto that right now,’ McCoy said, standing up. ‘We’ll need tri-ox compound. The ampoules I have aren’t going to last us long enough.’ 

‘I will provide you some.’ 

‘Thanks.’ 

T’Paal turned back to looked at Jim. It was not possible to map human facial expressions onto Vulcan ones, but he thought what he saw in her face was compassion. 

‘Go,’ T’Paal said. ‘You have much to do.’ 

Had she been human, Jim would have shaken her hand. 

‘Thank you.’ 

‘I wish you success.’ 

She saluted them. Jim reciprocated. Then she turned away from them, as if they had already gone. 

In the air-car on the way back to the estate, Jim dictated a list of what they would need while McCoy took notes. It was by no means a modest list – they would need boots, desert jackets, goggles, scarves, tricorders, water filters, rations, cooking utensils, sleeping-bags… Bones’ wrote as fast as he could, the elegant script turning into a mess under his stylus. Even if he had got his ability to write Vulcan from a master calligrapher, his appalling English hand-writing undermined him. Once they arrived at the house, McCoy handed the list to Savel and asked him to give it to the servants. As they walked up towards the house, he said: 

‘Remind me to double-check that I have everything I need in my medical kit. I didn’t put that on the list.’ 

‘I will,’ Jim said, although he doubted Bones needed the reminder. He looked like he was already listing things to pack in his mind. ‘Do you really think they’ll be able to get hold of tricorders and phasers?’ he asked as they reached the porch. 

‘I think they can get hold of anything.’ 

‘I never really know how to talk to the servants,’ Jim admitted. ‘They’re intimidating.’ 

Bones shrugged. 

‘They’re just disciplined. They’re no more difficult to talk to than other Vulcans.’ 

Jim laughed to himself. 

‘What?’ McCoy asked. 

‘Just thinking,’ Jim said. ‘All those years you spent teasing Spock. And here you are, buddies with Savel, friends with Doctor T’Paal.’ 

‘I haven’t stopped teasing Spock,’ McCoy said and opened the door. The hallway was dark. As they stepped inside, he dropped his voice. ‘Don’t worry about getting the gear. They can work miracles.’ 

‘What gear, Doctor McCoy?’

They both jumped. A shape broke lose from the darkness. In her grey veil and dress, she had barely been visible. Now, Lady Amanda’s face stood out, a pale oval in the dark. 

‘Where have you been?’ 

Jim tried to think of what to say. He felt like he had been caught by his mother sneaking out to do something she had forbidden. Now, under Amanda’s hard gaze, it was difficult to even come up with a lie. 

‘Well?’ she said sharply, looking from one to the other. 

Jim swallowed loudly and exchanged a look with Bones. 

‘We went into Shi’Kahr,’ he said. Amanda took two steps towards him. Her eyes bored into him. 

‘What’s happened?’ she said, voice like broken glass. McCoy reached out to her. 

‘Lady Amanda…’ 

She shook off his hand. 

‘ _What has happened to my son_?’ 

It was impossible to lie when faced with that tone of voice.

‘We don’t know,’ Jim said. ‘But he hasn’t checked in since last night.’ 

He had expected her to cry or groan, perhaps even faint. Instead, her face only tensed a little. 

‘We’ve been trying to get help,’ McCoy said. ‘Something broke down with the official lines of communication, so we’re macgyvering it.’

Amanda looked from one to the other. 

‘What are you doing?’ she asked quietly. 

‘We’re going to go find him,’ Jim said. ‘We’re leaving tomorrow.’ 

‘Have you spoken to the authorities?’ 

‘We tried. They didn’t listen.’ 

She was quite, as if torn between thoughts. Jim thought he knew what she was thinking. 

‘We know where they were last night. I think we can find out what’s happened.’ 

She looked him in the eye. 

‘I have no doubt about that.’ Her anger was gone. He put his hand on her arm. 

‘We’ll get him back.’ 

Lady Amanda nodded. 

‘What can I do?’ she asked. 

‘Inform Sarek,’ Jim said. ‘The Federation and the Vulcan government will listen to him.’ 

‘What shall I tell him?’ 

He hesitated, exchanging a look with McCoy. They had been vague about what the purpose of Spock’s trip was, but now he could not remember how little they had said. He felt so very tired.

McCoy stepped up and put a hand on Amanda’s shoulder. 

‘I’ll tell you what we know.’ Then he looked at Jim. ‘You should get some sleep.’ 

Jim rubbed his eyes and blinked a few times. 

‘I want to look over the packing,’ he said. 

‘It’ll take them a while to get it all sorted,’ McCoy said. ‘Isn’t it better to do it tomorrow morning? We’ll need to get up early anyway.’ 

Jim conceded defeat. 

‘Alright. I’ll go to bed.’ 

He did not bother to say goodnight – it felt like his brain was already asleep. He only vaguely registered how McCoy and Amanda left the hallway. The only detail that stuck was how McCoy offered her his arm, and she took it. As they walked away, she leaned against him, her resolve slipping for a moment. Jim turned away and walked towards the bedroom, too exhausted to reflect on the pain this would cause her. He went through his bedtime routine like a machine running through a program. It all was so automatic he might as well not have been present. Only when he lay down did his mind catch up with him. Despite the heat of the room, the bed was cold. He could feel the emptiness beside him, where Spock should lie. It was only exhaustion that allowed him to finally fall asleep.

***

Jim woke even before the servant who had come to rouse him touched his shoulder. He went from sleep to complete alertness in a moment, as if the servant was a yeoman who had come to inform him of a crisis. Sitting up, he blinked the sleep out of his eyes and then threw off the sheets. The servant stood to attention, holding a pile of clothes. Jim took them from him.

‘ _Th’i-oksaira,_ ’ he said, thanking him. The servant bowed his head briefly and left him to it. He lay out the clothes on the bed. They looked much like those Spock had worn when he had left. It felt strange that it was only three days since he had seen him. If things had gone to plan, he would have been coming home tomorrow. Instead, it was Jim who was setting out. He shook off the thought and headed to the shower. When he stepped out of the bathroom, the sky was growing lighter. He dressed as quickly as he could. The undershirt and long johns could as well have been Starfleet issue, but it was difficult not to pause to admire the workmanship of some of the other clothes.The shoulders of the tunic had been padded and stitched, to provide protection from the sun and the weight of his backpack. Jim could not help but smile when he realised that the trousers were in fact breeches, which were supposed to be worn with puttees. Just as he was tying the first one in place, there was a knock on the door and McCoy stepped in, the cloth strips unrolled in one hand and his boots in the other. 

‘I knew you’d figure those out,’ he said. ‘I have no idea how to get them on.’ 

‘Knowing your military history helps,’ Jim said. ‘Put your boots on first, and roll them up.’ 

McCoy sat down and got his boots on, grumbling. 

‘You’d think that they’d have started using something more modern than these things.’ 

‘It works,’ Jim said. ‘And you won’t get sand in your boots.’ He picked up the other leg-wrap, but did not start putting it on, waiting for McCoy to get his ready. However confused the puttees made him, he rolled them up with startling speed.

‘Have you gone through your kit?’ 

‘Yes. The only thing I’m missing is the tri-ox compound that T’Paal said she’d send with her daughter. I hope she remembers.’ 

‘She doesn’t seem like the kind of person to forget things.’ 

‘No.’ He finished rolling up the puttees. ‘Alright, what do I do?’ 

Jim put on his second puttee, securing the boot against his leg and overlapping the material all the way up his calf. McCoy mimicked him halfway through. He was clearly thinking of them as bandages, but it worked. When he was sure he knew what he was doing, Jim left him to it. The dining room had been overtaken with everything they were bringing. The servants had had the foresight not to start packing without him. He oversaw the work, doing some of it himself but relenting over parts. Much of the items were beyond his vocabulary skills, but the servants were attentive enough to understand his gestures. They were just about done when McCoy entered, his medical kit in his hand. 

‘They’ll be here soon. We should eat something before we leave.’ 

Jim nodded, although he barely felt hungry. McCoy seemed to know what he was thinking. 

‘This isn’t a red alert. You won’t get an opportunity to relax in a few hours.’ 

‘I know.’ He pointed at one of the backpacks. ‘That one’s yours.’ McCoy packed his kit, but for the most essential parts that were already clipped to his belt. As if someone had overheard them, one of the servants entered with two bowls of Vulcan-style porridge. They both left their packing and ate, not bothering to sit down. The porridge did not taste of much, but at least it was filling. 

When he had finished it, Jim put the bowl aside. 

‘Excuse me. Finish the last part of it, won’t you?’ 

He went from the dining-room to the bedroom. The sun was about to rise – they would leave soon. He just needed a moment to ground himself. In years past, he would have been able to go straight out into the field – perhaps this was a sign of ageing – or maybe it was just the worry about where this would lead. Once he had closed the door behind him, he started working the wedding ring off his finger. He seldom took it off these days. It was more than the fact that getting it over the swollen joints was becoming more difficult. After everything that happened around the Genesis device, he had far less patience for tiptoeing around their relationship. When he had taken command of the new _Enterprise_ , he had worn it constantly, only taking it off for official functions where it might distract. Spock never wore his on his finger, of course – Vulcans seldom wore rings. Instead, he would wear it on a chain around his neck. It lay on his bedside table now. Jim pulled the ring off his finger and went to Spock’s side of the bed. Carefully, he placed his wedding band beside his husband’s.

Clasping his hands behind his back, Jim walked aimlessly around the room. He stopped at the desk where Spock’s calligraphy set was still lying. The scroll of papyrus was held open with four round river stones. He wondered if Spock had collected them himself, recently, or when he was a child. If Spock had been here, he would have asked. There were so many things he wanted to ask, that he wanted to tell him. The bond stretched through his mind, beyond the point where he could sense it. It was like looking down a road that continued beyond the horizon. It existed beyond that, but it was unreachable. 

Pushing the river-stones away from the corners, he picked up the scroll. For a moment, he held it, deliberating. Then he let it roll up and put it inside his jacket. Just as he was doing up the buttons, there was a knock on the door. 

‘Yes?’ 

Lady Amanda opened the door. 

‘They’re here.’ 

Jim glanced out of the window. The sky was shining red with the rising sun now. 

‘Let’s go then.’ 

As they walked through the house side by side, Amanda asked:

‘When will you be back?’

‘Five days at most.’ Jim said. 

‘And if you’re not back by then?’ 

It was a question that had to be asked, even if Jim did not want to answer it. They had said that they would come back within five days, whether or not they found Spock. If they did not come back within five days, they would not come back at all. 

‘We’ve arranged to be in contact with Doctor T’Paal, Bones’ friend at the Science Academy,’ Jim said. ‘Her contact details are on the desk in Spock’s study.’ 

They had reached the hallway. McCoy entered along with the servants. He was already wearing his backpack. The servants were carrying Jim’s between them. He turned to Amanda. 

‘We’ll do everything we can. I promise.’ 

She nodded. 

‘I know you will.’ 

She stretched out her arms. He stepped closer and hugged her, hard. As she said goodbye to McCoy, the servants helped Jim on with the backpack. It was heavy, but once the straps were correctly fitted, it was doable.

Amanda let go of McCoy and smiled at them both. 

‘Don’t keep them waiting.’ 

Jim wanted to say something else, but did not know what. He just smiled back. Then he turned and stepped out. 

On the road below the cliff, a landspeeder stood. A young woman was sitting at the controls. She was the spitting image of Doctor T’Paal, but much younger. Jim concluded that this must be her daughter. The man who stood by the vehicle was a little older. When he saw them approach, he raised his hand in the _ta’al_.

‘Captain Kirk,’ he said. ‘I am Sobek. We come to serve.’ 

Jim responded to his salute, but could not help smiling. Sobek’s English was not particularly good, but the fact that he made the effort was touching. 

‘Your service honours us, Sobek. You’re Doctor T’Paal’s nephew?’ 

‘Correct. This is T’Lak, my cousin.’ 

T’Lak saluted them. Sobek turned to McCoy. 

‘Doctor McCoy. My aunt has spoken highly of your work.’ 

McCoy grinned and answered in Vulcan. The next thing he seemed to ask something. Sobek answered in the affirmative and took a leather case out of his pocket. McCoy opened it, surveyed the contents and thanked him. He picked something from the case before putting it safely in his backpack. Now Jim saw that he was holding a hypospray ampoule. McCoy retrieved a hypospray, clicked the ampoule in place and adjusted the dosage. 

‘Tri-ox compound,’ he explained and plunged the hypospray into Jim’s arm. He rubbed the spot and gave a surprised ‘huh’. ‘You alright?’ McCoy asked. 

‘Yes, fine,’ Jim said. ‘Surprisingly fine, actually.’ 

‘It’s possible you needed this stuff,’ he said as he adjusted the hypospray and then injected himself. ‘It’d explain why you’ve seemed a little off recently.’ He put the hypo into the medical kit at his belt. 

‘You only thought of that now, Doctor?’ Jim said. McCoy shrugged. 

‘My working theory was that you were a bit depressed. I was going to talk to you about it, but then all of this happened.’ 

‘Right now, I do _not_ feel depressed,’ he said. He undid the straps of his backpack and with Sobek’s help hauled it into the landspeeder. 

‘No, you’ve seemed better since yesterday,’ McCoy said, undoing the straps too. ‘Ever since you lost contact with Spock.’ He loaded his backpack into landspeeder and then gave Jim a meaningful look. ‘That’s its own pathology.’ 

Putting one foot on the landspeeder’s side, he hauled himself inside. Jim followed. T’Lak reached out her arm. They took hold of each other’s elbows and he managed to pull himself up. Slightly winded, he sat down beside McCoy. Sobek climbed in and nodded to T’Lak. She pushed some controls, and the motor roared to life. The vehicle rose a few feet and with a jerk shot forward. The wind made Jim’s eyes water. He put his goggles on and pulled the hood of his jacket up. McCoy was doing the same. The Vulcans appeared to deal much better with the wind. Her part of the ignition done, T’Lak turned in her seat and shouted something over the sound of the engines. Jim only caught half of it, and understood none of it. 

‘What did she say?’ Jim asked McCoy. 

‘She apologised that she can’t speak English,’ McCoy shouted back. ‘The only Earth languages she knows are Latin and Greek.’ 

‘Latin and Greek!?’

McCoy asked something in Vulcan, and T’Lak launched into an explanation. Halfway through it, he turned back to Jim and explained: 

‘She wanted to study Seneca. She’s asking if you’re familiar with Stoicism.’ 

Jim felt that his life had taken a very absurd turn all of a sudden.

‘I never had much of a head for ancient philosophy.’ 

The estate shrunk back into the distance. They turned a corner, and it was gone from view. Beneath them, the road ended. T’Lak turned back to the controls. The vehicle jerked as she adjusted the engines for the terrain under them. They zigzagged between the cliffs, where the sunlight had not yet reached. When he looked up, Jim could see buildings on top of the cliffs, the ancestral homes of other aristocratic families. The landspeeder rose further from the ground and cut between two cliffs. 

The sunlight blinded him for a moment. He pulled his goggles off to rub his eyes. When he looked around, the light was still imprinted on his vision. All around them, the Shi’Kahr Plains spread out. The ground here was dry and cracked, but to the west, Jim could see the green of the crops shining in the morning light. Beyond them he saw the spires of Shi’Kahr. They were fast shrinking away into the distance. Soon, they entered the long shadows of the mountains. The temperature dropped – he saw how McCoy pulled his gloves on better and rubbed his hands together. Jim barely felt the cold. The Hinek arête stretching out in front of them captivated him. The long ridge looked like the bone of some prehistoric beast, a monstrous shoulder-blade or iliac arch pushing out of the soil. The gradual slope came up into a sharp edge. It would be an interesting climb. Jim wondered if it had been formed by glaciers like similar ridges on Earth. It was very difficult to imagine ice in this place. He had the impulse to ask Spock, before remembering that he was not there. _He’s somewhere beyond that ridge,_ Jim told himself. _He’s there somewhere._

They travelled alongside the arête for almost twenty minutes. The wind was loud enough that talking was difficult. Nevertheless, whenever Sobek did not need her at the controls, T’Lak took the opportunity to turn around and chat to their passengers, or rather to McCoy. For once, Jim was happy about his bad grasp of Vulcan. McCoy was clearly struggling to hear what the enthusiastic young woman was saying, but was too polite or too smitten to tell her that he could barely hear her and that he knew next to nothing about Earth antiquity. 

Gradually, the height of the ridge decreased, until it suddenly dropped into a pass. T’Lak’s concentration went back on the controls. Together, the cousins made a sweeping turn in between the rocks. Jim took around. The red stone around them seemed to isolate them. Despite the modern vehicle they were in, Jim felt like they had moved back in time. This was the pass that the caravans would have taken to reach Shi’Kahr. He could imagine the people carrying baskets of fruit, too easily bruised to be trusted to an animal – the handlers of the beasts of burden, calling out to their charges to keep them moving – the _kilama_ with their swaying walk, their backs heavy with wares. Jim’s hand went to the pocket in his jacket, where he had placed Spock’s calligraphy. He did not know if that poem was written about the caravans which went through the Tanit desert, or if anyone at all knew – it was almost two-thousand years old, after all – but he liked to think that among the goods they had carried through this pass had been sea-shells that might amaze the inhabitants on the other side of the mountains. 

The stone around them fell away. He had thought that the Shi’Kahr Plains were large. He took that back. From beside him, he heard McCoy swear under his breath. 

The sand-sea stretched out into the west until it met the sky. The sand glittered white in the sunlight. The landspeeder made ripples form, leaving a fanlike trail which would soon be erased by the winds. 

‘This really is something, isn’t it?’ McCoy said. 

Jim could only nod. The sight of the desert filled him with awe. 

The arête was almost out of sight when the landspeeder slowed. T’Lak took over the controls, and the vehicle descended until it landed with a soft thud. Sobek jumped out of his seat. 

‘We cannot go further than this,’ he said. ‘My aunt was insistent.’

‘She was right to be,’ Jim said. ‘We’ll be safer on foot.’

With some effort, he managed to get out of the landspeeder without help. McCoy almost tripped and T’Lak had to take him by the elbow to steady him. Jim got the feeling that she thought he was quite endearing. In the meantime, Sobek loaded off the backpacks and helped Jim put his on. 

‘Did Doctor T’Paal explain the procedures we set up?’ Jim asked. Sobek appeared to think through the sentence to make sure he had understood it. 

‘Yes. You will contact her when you return.’ 

‘At the earliest in two days,’ Jim said. ‘When we approach, we’ll contact her before dusk. It might well take longer than two days for us to get back. If we’re not back in five days, you contact the authorities. Don’t go initiating any searches on your own.’ 

‘Would not daily contact be more logical?’ Sobek asked. 

Jim finished arranging his goggles and shook his head. 

‘No. The transmissions may be picked up. This is a rescue operation. We’re playing by different rules.’ 

Sobek nodded. The way he stood reminded Jim of an ensign, anxious not to misstep. 

‘I understand.’ He hesitated a moment. ‘Captain, there is an Earth phrase. I do not know if it is correct to use now.’ 

‘What is it?’

‘It is the concept of luck. It is not a Vulcan concept, but I understand it is similar to the favour of the gods.’ 

‘Yes, in a way,’ Jim said. 

‘Then I wish you luck,’ Sobek said. ‘And the gods’ favour.’ 

‘Thank you, Sobek,’ he answered, earnestly. ‘I think we’ll need both.’ 

McCoy stepped closer. 

‘Ready to go, Jim?’ 

‘Yes.’ 

T’Lak went to her cousin’s side. Both raised their hands in the Vulcan salute.

‘ _Dif-tor heh smusma_ ,’ she said. 

Jim saluted back, and McCoy gave a bow. 

‘ _Sochya eh dif_ ,’ they both said. Without more ceremony, the cousins turned back to the landspeeder and boarded it. The two humans watched how the speeder rose when the engine was turned on, and then show away, throwing up sand was it rose. As the vehicle became smaller, and the people in it became no more than rough outlines, Jim felt a profound sense of isolation envelop him. How many miles were they from the next sentient life-form? In a place like this, it was easy to imagine that the planet was uninhabited. 

‘Let’s go, then.’ he said out loud, but more to himself than to Bones. He took out the map, checked the landmarks and set off first. McCoy followed closely behind. At first they did not speak. On occasion, Jim would stop, look at his compass, check the map and glance at his watch. About half an hour after they set out, McCoy asked:

‘Why do you keep checking the time? We’re not going to get anywhere faster that way, you know.’

Jim chuckled. 

‘I’m timing us,’ he explained. ‘I’m trying to calculate how much ground we can cover on one day.’

‘We can’t be moving very fast. This isn’t exactly Yosemite National Park.’ 

‘True,’ Jim said, ‘but we’re making pretty good time this far.’ 

‘We’ll make up for that later in the day,’ McCoy said, an edge of sarcasm in his voice. 

‘That’s how it always is.’ 

‘If your knees start acting up, you’ll tell me, won’t you? You pull something out here, we’re toast. Almost literally.’

‘I promise I won’t be proud,’ Jim said. ‘But I feel fine.’ 

They fell silent again. A few times they stopped to take a drink of water, but they did not really speak. Jim’s mind was on the map and the landscape around him. To the east, he could see the Tanit foothills in the distance. To the west, all he saw was the vast emptiness of the desert. There were scattered cliffs protruding from the sand, but they were the only thing to break the monotony of the expanse. He wondered whether there were inscriptions or petroglyphs on any of them. He remembered reading about shrines situated in desert caves, so why might there not be wayside altars where merchants and travellers could stop to pray? In a place like this, you would need all the protection you could get. What Sobek had said came back to him. It had been touching. The Vulcan gods may not be his, but it was still meaningful to him. They were the gods of this place, and they were Spock’s gods. That was worth something.

‘Damn this thing.’

Jim looked over his shoulder. McCoy was holding his tricorder, but it was clearly causing him trouble. He slapped his hand against its side as if it were an old transmitter device. 

‘What’s the matter?’ 

‘This useless box of wires won’t give me any long-range readings,’ McCoy said. ‘It comes out all garbled.’ 

‘That’s the bedrock,’ Jim said. ‘It’s magnetic. This entire area of Vulcan is unreliable for scanners.’ 

McCoy rolled his eyes. 

‘Typical!’ He went back to tuning the scans. ‘Does it affect communicators, by any chance?’ 

‘No. They work on different principles,’ Jim said. ‘If it did affect communicators, I don’t think we’d be about to walk into terrorist-controlled territory.’ 

McCoy muttered something assenting. 

‘I suppose it’s to their advantage. Makes it much more difficult to track them.’ 

‘It means we won’t turn up on their scanners either, though.’ 

‘True.’ He made the last adjustments. ‘Alright, I want to test this thing. Keep walking. I’ll shout and wave when it doesn’t pick you up anymore.’ 

‘Should we really split up?’ Jim asked. 

‘To be honest I don’t think you’ll get far enough to be out of eyeshot. Go on, we need to know what kind of range this blasted tricorder has.’

Admitting that it was the best way to find out, Jim set off. He looked over his shoulder every so often to make sure he did not miss the signal. When it came, he could just about hear it. He stopped and waited for Bones to catch up. 

‘Judging by how long that took, I’d guess 400 metres,’ Jim said. 

‘About 350,’ McCoy said. ‘But good guess.’ 

‘Well, it’ll give us some warning,’ Jim said. ‘Although visibility is good enough that we can see further than that.’ 

‘At least it is now. We don’t know what it’ll be like in the dark, of if there’s a sand-storm.’ 

‘I hope we won’t have to deal with that.’ 

They started walking again. 

‘What’s the animal life here like?’ McCoy asked. 

‘In terms of predators, there are le’matyas in the foothills. I think they sometimes come down here to hunt, but I don’t know how often. Then there are sand-snakes – carnivorous, but not poisonous – and some carrion birds.’ 

‘Charming,’ McCoy said. ‘The animal life is just as welcoming as the landscape, then.’ 

Above them, the sun was climbing the sky. It was getting hot enough that the hoods on their jackets were providing shade instead of warmth now. Jim had a feeling that soon, if he were to touch the sand, it would burn him. As it grew hotter, their pace slowed. He could sense McCoy flagging. 

‘T’Lak seemed to take a bit of a shine to you,’ he said, to distract him from the heat more than anything. 

‘I’m sure she would have preferred you if you had a language in common,’ McCoy said. ‘I don’t know a thing about ancient Rome, apart from that they were very fond of pessaries.’ 

‘I’m not going to ask,’ Jim said. ‘Was that all you talked about? Rome?’ 

‘Yes – she did most of the talking. She told me all about her thesis plans. She seems like a bright girl. Clearly the odd one out in her family, though. The rest of them are all medical professionals.’

‘Infinite diversity in infinite combinations,’ Jim said. 

‘True. Not that Vulcan parents are good at remembering that when it comes to their kids.’ 

‘Not really, no.’ Perhaps it was unfair of them to still be angry at Sarek, but neither of them could really let go of it. 

‘T’Paal seems like a decent sort, though.’ 

‘She is.’ 

Jim grinned. 

‘Is something brewing there, Bones?’ 

McCoy snorted. 

‘Don’t be ridiculous. I’m a married man.’ 

‘So am I,’ Jim said. ‘Doesn’t mean I can’t acknowledge that she’s a very handsome woman.’ 

‘Just because the Fabrinians practice polygamy nowadays doesn’t mean I’m going to,’ Bones said. ‘Besides, she’s not my type.’ 

‘Why?’ Jim asked. ‘It’s not because she’s Vulcan, is it?’ 

‘It’s because she’s a doctor. I’ve had it as a strict policy ever since the Jocelyn-disaster. No fraternising.’ 

‘That one time I met Jocelyn, I just got the feeling that the two of you were completely incompatible.’ 

‘Being colleagues didn’t help. Not that there’s anything wrong with it in general, of course. The two of you made it work.’ 

‘Yes.’ For a moment, Jim felt himself about to disappear into memories. The present pulled him back, with all its threats and uncertainties. As if sensing his distraction, McCoy said: 

‘To be perfectly honest, it might be a little that she’s a Vulcan. Not that I don’t find her attractive. I just find her impossible to read, almost like there’s nothing _to_ read. In a way, that’s very liberating. There hasn’t been one moment of awkward sexual tension between us. We make good friends.’ 

‘That’s important too,’ Jim said. ‘Sorry for teasing you. Didn’t mean to imply that you were fooling around.’

‘It’s alright.’ 

‘Do you miss Natira?’ 

‘Of course I do,’ McCoy said. ‘Terribly. Some days I just want to get on a shuttle, so I can go see her and count those funny toes of hers.’ When Jim looked over his shoulder, he saw that his friend was smiling rather sadly. Then he shrugged. ‘But then it’s alright again. We’re used to it. Besides, she has her job, I have mine.’ Now he looked at Jim properly and smiled at him. ‘And if I’m on the Fabrinian Homeworld, who’s going to look after you?’ 

Jim smiled back. He could not really articulate how grateful he was to have Bones with him. 

They pressed on until noon was an hour away. Then they stopped, took their backpacks off and erected the tarp for shade. It made sense to adopt that Vulcan custom. The hours when the sun was at its highest point were so warm that even species who had evolved to cope with the heat preferred to avoid it. If they continued walking during that time, they were more likely to get heat-stroke than anything else.

When they rolled out their ground mats and half-lay down on them, Jim had the odd feeling that they looked rather like they were having a picnic. Something about the peacefulness of the shade fuelled that feeling. When he lay down properly, he saw how the unevenness of the weave of the tarp formed patterns against the sunlight. Even as he watched the patterns of the dark splashes where the weft was thicker, and the places that sparkled where it was thinner, his mind was still on their previous conversation. Perhaps it showed – some tightening in his jaw, or a look in his eyes. 

‘How are you holding up?’ McCoy asked. Jim shrugged as best as he could when lying down. 

‘Fine.’ He could practically feel his friend shoot him a look. ‘I’m worried about him,’ he admitted. ‘It doesn’t feel right to be out here without him. I know that doesn’t make any sense, seeing why we’re here, but… I miss him.’ 

McCoy lay down properly too and sighed. 

‘It’s a bit close to home, this, isn’t it?’ 

‘I try not to think about it.’ He wanted all this to remind him of Rura Penthe, if anything, but however much he tried, he could not shake off the constantly recurring memory of the actions he had thought would end his career. When he had set out on them, the best he had hoped for was to put Spock to rest and give Bones some peace of mind. Things had played out very differently – far, far better – but the road to that point was one he did not want to think about. 

‘I miss him too,’ McCoy said. Then, as if to save face, he added: ‘But when we find him, don’t tell him I said that.’ He sat up again. ‘Get some sleep, Jim. I’ll keep watch.’

Jim felt like he should argue, but he was very tired. When he closed his eyes, he could still see the light shine through his eyelids. Nevertheless, he felt himself slipping into sleep. 

He was awoken by McCoy slapping his leg. 

‘Huh? What’s the matter?’ He sat up, startled.

‘Your turn to keep watch,’ McCoy said, already lying down. ‘It’s past noon.’ 

‘What did you do while I slept?’ 

‘Tried to see if I could see something through the binoculars,’ Bones muttered. ‘I saw some odd-looking birds, but that was it.’

Jim put on his goggles and looked out from under the tarp. It was bright and hot, and his mouth tasted funny. He took a swig of water and picked up McCoy’s binoculars. The sands spread out in every direction. Nothing grew there. The only thing that disturbed the sands were the ripples made from the wind. Beside him, Bones rolled onto his side and started snoring softly. Jim tried to find other sounds beyond it. When he concentrated, he heard the wind whispering over the sand, and his own heartbeat inside his ears. It was impossible not to feel lonely in such a place.

***

Their going was slower that afternoon. When they stopped to rest and eat, McCoy complained about his back hurting and vowed never to nap on the ground again. He waved away Jim’s offers to take some of his packing. Whether his back was not as bad as he claimed it was or he refused for fear of Jim straining his bad knees, he was not sure.

Their shadows grew longer over the sand as the sun started its descent. Slowly, the temperature began to drop. If Jim had read the map and done the calculations right, they should reach Spock’s last reported position by nightfall. He checked the compass to make sure they were still moving in the right direction. They were walking north-east, as he had planned. Putting the compass away, he looked over his shoulder. McCoy was keeping up well, but his face was set in a concentrated frown. 

‘How’s your back?’

‘It’ll hold,’ he said. Jim stopped to let him catch up. 

‘What’s on your mind?’ That frown was a sure sign that something was preoccupying him. McCoy did not stop, so Jim walked with him. It took a while for him to answer. 

‘What I said this morning, as we were leaving…’ He broke off. 

Jim smiled.

‘It’s not like it’s a secret, Bones. I’m not good at letting go. I never have been.’ 

McCoy nodded. 

‘I feel I should have said something before. I should have taken you aside as soon as I thought you seemed depressed.’ 

Jim shot him an amused look. 

‘You’re supposed to be retired too, you know,’ he said. ‘You’re not my doctor anymore.’

‘Doesn’t make my oath any less valid,’ McCoy said. 

They walked in silence for a while, side by side now. 

‘I’m trying to figure out how to say this without making you jump at me,’ McCoy said after a while. 

‘What is it?’ Jim asked, promising himself not to get angry. McCoy clearly thought this was important.

‘That way you snapped into action, as soon as Spock missed the third call.’ 

‘It comes naturally to me. It’s what I’ve been trained to do.’ 

‘But it’s not what you’re supposed to do anymore.’ 

‘Are you saying that you think it’s wrong, what we’re doing now?’ Despite his promise, he could not hold the venom out of his voice. 

‘If I thought it was wrong, I wouldn’t do it,’ McCoy responded, annoyed now. ‘If I thought there was any other way, I would have insisted on that. I’d have drugged you to keep you at home.’ He sighed. ‘T’Paal was right. This is a stupid plan. But I still think it’s Spock’s best shot.’ 

‘Yes.’ His annoyance had calmed Jim’s own; he knew he had a point.

‘What worries me is your excitement,’ he continued. ‘I don’t mean over all of this happening, before you say that. I meant at… doing something. Committing to a grand gesture.’ 

‘You know that’s not what this is.’ 

McCoy sighed, frustrated. 

‘Jim, it _is_ a grand gesture. Just because it’s necessary doesn’t make it a good idea. And what happens when there’s no grand gesture to make? You can’t go around hoping for another crisis to drag you out of your dull reality.’ 

Jim came to a stop. He was not angry anymore. In fact, it was like he didn’t feel anything at all. 

‘What do you want me to say to that?’ he asked. McCoy had stopped too. He did not answer. ‘I know what you’re talking about,’ Jim said. ‘And you have a point. But right now, I can’t think of the future.’ His voice broke on that last word. Ever since they set off, he had avoided considering what they would find. Now all those thoughts came at once. Was he out there somewhere, all alone, dying from dehydration? Had he been sold out by the people who had gone with him to protect him? Was he dead already, and somehow Jim could not feel it? 

McCoy pressed his shoulder. 

‘We’ll find him,’ he said softly. For a moment, Jim wanted to argue. He could not know that. What chance did they have, two elderly off-worlders armed only with pocket phasers and equipped with malfunctioning tricorders? The Tanit desert was larger than the Gobi. How could they possibly find him? 

The pressure from McCoy’s hand around his shoulder increased. It felt like an anchor keeping him in reality. 

‘Yes,’ he said, half to himself, half to his friend. McCoy let his hand fall. Jim looked up at the sky. ‘We should get a move-on. The sun’s almost about to set.’ 

They set off again. The next time they stopped to check the map, Jim got the field-glasses out. He scanned the terrain in front of them. Then he handed the binoculars to McCoy. 

‘You see those cliffs?’ 

McCoy directed the binoculars the way he pointed. 

‘Yes.’ 

Jim held out the map. 

‘Those are that.’ He tapped the map with the same finger, right at the symbol for cliffs. Just by it was a pencil stroke and a date. 

‘That’s where they were last time you spoke to Spock?’ 

‘Yes. They must have been planning to stay the night there.’ 

McCoy looked towards the cliffs, without the binoculars this time. Like that, they looked like a dark-red smudge on a dusty canvas. 

‘I suppose it’s as good a shelter as you can find out here,’ he said unenthusiastically. Jim could almost feel what he was imagining, but he could not let himself be dragged down into the quagmire his brain had become. Instead, he put away his binoculars, pulled his goggles back on and started walking. McCoy followed without a word of question. 

It was getting darker. Behind them, the sky looked like it was ablaze. In front of them, their shadows stretched long. As they came closer, the red cliffs that protruded from the sand shone with the dying light. For every metre closer they came, Jim scanned the area ahead of them. He was thrown between hoping to find something and hoping not to. They were almost at the cliffs when he saw the first sign they had seen this far. 

‘Look!’ He quickened his step, walking faster than his knees permitted. By the time McCoy caught up, he had reached the spot and was poking at the ashes of a fire with his foot. 

‘So they were here,’ McCoy said. 

‘It looks like it.’ 

Jim looked around to confirm his suspicion. He did not know how much the sands shifted in this area, but he had been able to see the remains of the fire. There were no indentations in the sand from resting bodies, and he could see no sign of a latrine having been dug.

‘They didn’t stay the night here,’ he said. McCoy looked at him, hiding his surprise well. ‘The fire is too small to warm up three people, and there are no other signs anyone stayed here.’ 

‘They wouldn’t have wanted to draw attention to themselves,’ McCoy said, thinking out loud. 

‘Doesn’t explain it,’ Jim said. ‘This is a cooking-fire, if anything. I think they stopped here at sundown. Perhaps they rested for a while. Then they continued.’ 

‘In the middle of the night?’ 

‘There are plenty of reasons why,’ Jim said. ‘The night isn’t as warm. You might be more exposed, but so is anyone else. Besides, Vulcans don’t need as much sleep. They might have decided to make the most of it.’ 

McCoy exhaled. 

‘I’m not sure if that’s good or bad news.’ 

‘Neither do I,’ said Jim and undid the straps on his backpack. ‘We might as well stay here tonight.’ 

McCoy took off his backpack too. 

‘Don’t know why not.’ 

They did not speak much. Both realised only now how tired they were. They ate in silence and then rolled out the sleeping-bags close to the cliff. Jim volunteered to stay on watch, but McCoy shook his head. 

‘Will that really make a difference?’ he asked. Jim had to concede that he did not know if it would make them any safer. They both lay down, but Jim did not sleep. He lay awake for some time, his hand on his phaser. Once or twice he saw something move in the darkness beyond the fire. From the size of it, he thought it was a _le’matya_. If it had chosen to attack, phaser fire might not be enough to stop it. Fortunately, the fire held the beast at bay. Besides that, he saw nothing. He was not sure that there was a world beyond the ring of light from the fire. Slowly, he relaxed. If there was no world, there was no threat. He moved closer to McCoy for warmth and finally drifted off. His phaser was still drawn.

***

They woke at dawn when the first rays of the sun crept under the cliff protruding over their camp. Jim felt stiff and tired, but once he had loosened his joints a little, it felt better. McCoy grumbled about his back, but he seemed well-rested nevertheless. They set out immediately after breakfast, their bags lighter than yesterday. Jim sincerely hoped that the maps Spock had made were right about where to find water. They had enough to last them that day, but by nightfall they had to reach the underground springs to refill their bottles.

Jim walked with both the map and compass in his hands now, constantly checking that they were still on the route drawn out. There must be answers there, he told himself. With every step, he hoped and feared for some sign. None came before noon. They stopped and erected the tarp to protect themselves from the sun. As Jim sat guard, he surveyed the terrain ahead of them. The sand was thicker here than it had been further south. Instead of the seemingly eternal stretch of sand, there were the soft waves of dunes. To the west, a gaggle of birds took off. Jim followed them with the binoculars. They were large, red animals, with large beaks like toucans and wrinkled necks like turkeys. He did not know the name of the birds, but he did not like the look of them. When he woke McCoy up to let him take over the watch, he told him about them to give him something to do while he guarded. 

They continued walking. They were not moving as fast as yesterday. The thick sand slowed them down. They did not talk much, saving their breath for the walking. When McCoy suddenly stopped, some two hours after their break, Jim thought at first it was to rest. Instead of getting his water-flask out or loosening his backpack, he raised his hand to shield his eyes and looked ahead. 

‘Do you see that?’ he asked, pointing. ‘Two o’clock.’ 

Jim followed his finger. At first he saw nothing, only endless hills of sand. Then he spotted it – a sharp edge on what he had thought was a dune. 

‘That doesn’t look natural,’ he said. It was not far ahead – a few hundred metres or so. They started walking again, turning off the route they had been following. Jim had assumed he would see more as they drew nearer, but instead he lost sight of that edge. He knew only by memory where it was. 

Abruptly, McCoy’s arm shot out in Jim’s way, stopping him. 

‘Look!’ He pointed down at the sand. The grains glinted in the sunlight, but among them was something else that caught the light a different way. 

‘What is that?’ Jim asked. McCoy pulled his goggles down around his neck and crouched down. 

‘It’s glass.’ 

‘Glass?’ 

With gloved fingers, McCoy reached out and picked up a curved fragment. The way it had broken made it look like a glass hook. Jim thought it looked odd, but what disturbed him was his friend’s face. It had gone very stiff. Letting the glass-shard fall, he walked slowly forward, looking down at the ground and pulling his shoes through the sand. After only moments, he stopped. His foot had connected with something. Dropping down on his haunches, he pulled out the item. It looked like a small book. McCoy barely spared it a glance. He was already pushing his hand into the sand again. 

‘Bones?’ 

McCoy stopped and pulled out his hand. The sand fell from the thing he was holding. It was a hypospray. The glass ampoule, curved in the same way as the fragments, was still intact. McCoy held it up and inspected it. Then he looked at Jim. 

‘It’s benjisidrine.’ 

A wave of horror crashed over him. It took a moment for him to speak. 

‘Spock’s.’ 

McCoy nodded. 

‘Yes.’ He picked up the leather case. ‘I gave him this before he left.’ He stood up and came closer. ‘He wouldn’t have left this here if he had a choice.’ 

‘The ampoule was smashed,’ Jim said. ‘Perhaps he thought the hypo wasn’t useable.’ He gestured at the hypo still in the doctor’s hand. ‘Does that still work?’ 

‘I wouldn’t recommend it,’ Bones said. ‘It’s unlikely to be sterile. There’s all sorts of pathogens crawling around in this sand.’ 

‘He’d know that…’ 

Bones cut him off. 

‘Jim, I saw him pack this. It was in a closed pocket inside his backpack. There is no way he dropped it, and he wouldn’t just have chucked it.’ 

Jim looked away from him, not wanting to look him in the eye. Instead, he caught sight of the thing they had been heading towards. Perhaps it was the angle he was looking at it, or perhaps it was this new piece of information, but suddenly he saw what it was. 

‘No,’ he whispered. He set off at a run, as fast as he could. 

‘Jim!’ McCoy shouted and ran after him. 

His legs felt heavy in the sand, and the thin air clawed at his throat. He was oblivious to it all – how his knees ached, and his chest hurt, and the straps of his backpack cut into his shoulders. All he saw was the overturned landspeeder, half-covered in sand. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw how McCoy caught up with him, wheezing. The next moment, he was suddenly gone. Jim stopped, abruptly, watching how he tripped and tumbled to the ground. 

‘Bones!’ He hurried over to him. ‘Are you alright?’ 

McCoy was already pushing himself up when Jim reached him. He looked surprised as he tried to blink the sand out of his eyes. 

‘I think so,’ he said, breathing heavily. ‘Something caught my foot…’ He looked back the way they came. The surprise disappeared, and his eyes grew in shock. ‘Jim, don’t look. It’s a head.’ 

He looked. He caught sight of the black hair, tangled with sand and blood – the point of a Vulcan ear – the pale bone where the scalp had come lose. His knees gave way under him. He doubled over and vomited. He no longer breathed as much as gulped air. His head was swimming, enough that he almost did not register McCoy’s steadying hand against his back. Somewhere far away, he heard him talking, all calming platitudes, but his voice trembled. When he moved his hand to his neck to find the point to inject him with tri-ox compound, Jim felt how his hands shook. The oxygen that flooded his blood seemed to make everything sharp – the taste of bile in his mouth, the tremble in Bones’ hand, even the grains of sand which should be blurred through the tears. He reached up and wiped his eyes on his sleeve. McCoy pressed his shoulder again and stood. He followed him with his gaze, trying his upmost not to look at the head. Instead, he focused on McCoy’s face when he crouched down and inspected it. The muscles in his jaw tensed, an almost imperceptible admission of horror. He moved a little closer, studying something closer. Then he stood up and crossed back to him. 

‘The ears are pierced,’ he said, ‘and there are no fillings. It’s not him.’ 

Jim exhaled. The relief was as huge as the horror had been. 

‘Cause of death?’ he asked. 

McCoy shook his head. 

‘I can’t tell. Some animal has been at it. Maybe those birds we saw.’ 

‘Could they have severed it?’ 

‘No. I’d say that was done with a large knife.’ 

Jim looked over at the half-buried wreck. He struggled to get to his feet; McCoy pulled him up by the arm. His legs still felt unsteady, but they held him up. 

‘Spock!’ he called. As fast as he could, he made his way closer. ‘Spock!’ 

There was no answer, not even an echo. He skidded to a halt a few metres from the wreck. Things were strewn around the site, half-buried in the sand. He saw a communicator, a water-flask, a small statuette of a Vulcan god. He almost fell over the second body. 

‘Bones!’ 

It was covered in sand, but even before he started pulling it out Jim could tell that it was not Spock. The shoulders were too narrow and the body too long. Neither was it the owner of the head. As the sand fell away, he saw the man’s face. The skin had darkened and had taken on a leathery look, and the blood on the lips had dried a shade of ochre. The mouth was wide-open, as if he was screaming. The smell was almost enough to make Jim sick again. He stepped away just as McCoy reached him. The doctor got down on his knees at the body and priced off the goggles. 

‘This is the medic,’ he said. ‘Kelek, I think his name was.’ 

He was right. Jim recalled this tall, narrow-shouldered man had watching him kiss Spock goodbye. The security guard who had been by his side had had pierced ears, he remembered now. He resisted looking over his shoulder. 

‘The sands must have shifted after he died,’ he said instead. ‘Those vultures can’t have seen him.’ 

‘Possible,’ McCoy said, busy feeling the corpse’s joints and inspecting the eyes. Under the milkiness, Jim could see the burst blood-vessels. ‘I’d say he’s been dead two or three days. Cause of death is pretty clear.’ He indicated the eyes. ‘He got hit with a nerve disruptor.’ 

Jim looked away from the corpse, at the wreckage instead. They must have been ambushed that night. He circled the landspeeder. It almost did not surprise him when he spotted the bodyguard’s headless body a few metres away. His senses all felt dulled. He barely spared it a glance. Instead, he crouched down by the landspeeder. It was resting wrong way up, one side higher than the other. If he lay flat on his stomach, he could see the gap between the ground and the vehicle. 

‘Spock?’ 

He could already see that there was no one there. He did not know how that made him feel. Had Spock managed to get away somehow, it would have made a decent place to hide. He had also thought that if he had been injured or trapped when the landspeeder crashed, he might have still been there, clinging to life. However disappointed he was not to find him, he was relieved too. What could they do for him here if he had been badly injured? They had no way to transport him. Even if McCoy had brought a full field kit, he could not treat complicated injuries with it. Their isolation now seemed much more palpable than before. 

_Concentrate,_ he told himself. _There must be something here to help._

Reaching in under the wreckage, he tried the controls. He had hoped the computer circuits were still intact and could give them some data, but they must have been damaged in the crash. Instead, he crept a little further in and got hold of a backpack. He had gotten hold of the bottom of it – from what he could see, it was open. When he pulled at it, he heard it scrape against the landspeeder. He could not risk the speeder shifting and falling on him. Instead, he got out his pocket knife and cut into the canvas. When he reached into it, he thought for a moment what he would do if this was the wrong one. Then his fingers met something square and covered in cloth. He grabbed it and pulled it lose. Quickly, he crawled out, the diary in hand. 

He emerged from under the wreckage just as McCoy approached. 

‘What do you have there?’

‘Spock’s diary,’ he said, holding up the notebook. ‘He thought bringing a PADD was too heavy and unreliable, so he decided to do it the old-fashioned way.’ 

He flicked through the pages. There were about a dozen pages filled with Spock’s even hand-writing. It was all in English, meant for the president’s office. He closed the book and looked up at McCoy. 

‘Did you find anything else?’ 

‘The other body, but you probably saw that.’ 

‘Yes.’ Jim put the notebook in his own backpack and got to his feet. ‘Did she die from the decapitation?’ 

‘I can’t be sure,’ McCoy said, frowning. ‘She might have been shot first. This is them, isn’t it?’ 

‘The Kesaya? It must be.’ 

‘Nerve disruptors are banned,’ he observed. ‘How are they getting hold of them?’ 

‘They probably didn’t,’ Jim said, remembering what Spock had told him. ‘Spock thinks they’re constructing their own weapons. Nerve disruptors are more effective than phasers if you’re out to cause damage, and they don’t care about Federation weapon laws.’

‘True,’ Bones said still looking bothered. ‘Don’t you think it’s odd, though?’ 

‘What?’ 

‘Why would people who have nerve disruptors decapitate someone?’ 

The answer came to Jim far too quickly. 

‘To intimidate.’ 

‘Who?’ McCoy looked the way they had come, towards the bodies. 

‘Either they killed the bodyguard in front of the medic before they shot him…’ 

‘Or they did it for Spock,’ McCoy filled in. Jim let out a long, slow breath and rubbed his hands together.

‘There’s no chance he got away, is there?’ 

McCoy folded his arms tightly. 

‘Without his kit? Without water or food or medication? He wouldn’t do that.’ 

Jim looked out into the vastness of the desert. 

‘What if he did?’ he said. ‘What if he’s out there?’ He broke off. ‘What if his body is out there?’ 

McCoy unfolded his arms. 

‘You’d know.’ 

‘Last time, I didn’t feel the bond breaking. I didn’t notice when it happened.’ At least he thought he had not, but perhaps it had been there, amidst the shock and sadness and anger. It was possible that what had been the breaking of the telepathic connection between them had seemed to him, a non-telepath, as only one more wave in the sea of bereavement. He had not definitely felt it being gone until the next day, when he reached out and found that the it no longer led anywhere. Now, when he turned within his mind and found the bond, it was not a chain with its links clipped. It felt rather like tugging at a ribbon and feeling the tension from another’s hand at the other end. 

He blinked, a little disoriented at the sensation. 

‘No,’ he said. ‘It’s still there.’ He sat down, suddenly dizzy. McCoy sat down at his side and put his hand on his shoulder. It was at one a friendly gesture and a professional one. Jim still felt it trembling.

Jim did not know how long they sat that way. Gradually, he regained control of himself, and the tremble of Bones’ hand eased. He did not take it from Jim’s shoulder until he stood up. He opened his backpack and rummaged for something. 

‘What are you looking for?’ Jim said. Just then, McCoy found it. He pulled out a trowel. 

‘I’m going to dig a grave,’ he said. 

‘What? No!’

He stared, surprised. Jim got up and took the trowel out of his hand. 

‘We leave everything like we found it.’ 

McCoy’s gaze hardened. 

‘We can’t leave them like this,’ he said, gesturing towards the wreck and the bodies. 

‘We have to.’ 

‘No,’ McCoy said, grabbing the trowel again. ‘We don’t just throw away our customs in the face of danger. They deserve the dignity of a proper burial.’ 

‘If we move the bodies and the Kesaya come this way again, they’ll know someone has been here,’ Jim said. ‘It’ll put them on guard. Worse, it might push them to do something to Spock.’

McCoy’s resistance held for a few more second. Then his grip around the trowel loosened. 

‘Fine,’ he said, giving in but not agreeing. ‘Give that back and we can go.’ 

Jim handed him the trowel, which he packed as Jim put away Spock’s diary. He would read it later. He took the lead, northwards. They did not speak. Instead, he concentrated on the terrain ahead. If he strained his eyes, he could see the red rocks jutting out of the sands, far larger than those they had slept under last night. On the map, Spock had written a word in Vulcan across them: “well”. He hoped it was correct, and that that well had not run dry. If he was reading the map right, there were multiple caves. How would they know where to find the well? They would simply have to search them. It occurred to him now that if Spock somehow escaped the ambush, those caves would be the perfect hiding place. If they had thought he was dead and left him, perhaps he could made his way to shelter after their departure. But McCoy had had a point. Even if he was injured, he would have at least have taken a flask of water with him.

Despite his hopes, Jim felt that he had not been overlooked. If they had caught him, what would they do to him? If they did not know who he was, perhaps they would treat him as just another prisoner. That was not an encouraging thought. The Kesaya had executed hostages. If they did know his identity, they might see him as a good bargaining-chip. There were both people and institutions of importance that they could pressure – Starfleet, the Federation diplomatic corps, Sarek. Had they released the names of their captives before that? he wondered. If so, they may have made announcements that they had missed because of their haste to leave. They had left Amanda alone to receive that message. He did not want to consider what it would do to her. For that matter, he did not want to think what the Kesaya might do to Spock. With a flash, he remembered the footage he had watched of the man being tortured. Against his will, he imagined that being done to Spock. He pushed away the thought of torture and insults. Instead, he tried to reach through the bond. It did not work – his psychic abilities were too weak, and Spock was too far away. 

His thoughts went back to the crash-site. He was aware of the sound of McCoy’s breathing, a little way behind him. It was like he could sense his anger. Jim could not blame him. He felt the guilt like a weight in his stomach. He wondered how many times during his years as captain he had conducted funerals. As a young officer, he had understood that a starship did not have the means to bring the dead home, but he had been disturbed by the idea of a dead body floating through space until it was snapped up in the gravity of some larger object and became part of the satellites of debris that orbited it. By the end of his first year in space, he found it rather a beautiful idea instead. He had long assumed that that would be his own fate. He had even come to like the thought that once he died, his body would not be trapped in the soil, but would orbit some distant planet. Since he had retired, he had thought that really, he should discuss it with Spock so that they knew each other’s wishes, but he had put it off. It felt like too much of a reminder of the events in the Mutara Nebula. 

But at least he had gotten to bury Spock. His thought now turned to the one he had left behind, only hastily covered. It was only yet another aspect of the guilt he felt, but now, it hurt him more than usual. All he had brought home to Carol was his condolences. Their son had been left on a dying planet, the only attempt at dignity awarded to him being his father’s jacket covering his face. 

It should not bother him this much. If he thought about it logically, it did not seem more destructive than his body breaking down after being buried. It was just quicker. But logic did not come into it. What did come into it were latent ideas he did not know where he had learned. Who had ever told him that a body must be complete? No one. In fact, he remembered reading, at some point in his teenage years, that it did not matter. No one would be left out when the dead rose. He was not even sure he believed in that kind of thing, and yet that idea would not let go. Never mind that there had been nothing they could have done, not without putting lives at risk. He still should have done something. 

‘Jim?’

He realised he had come to a stop. Through the blur of tears, he saw McCoy looking at him. 

‘I never got to bury David.’ He blinked, and the tears fell. ‘I didn’t bury my son.’ 

McCoy inhaled sharply, then let his head fall as he sighed and rubbed his face. 

‘I’m sorry, Jim.’ 

‘You were right. It is undignified to leave them like that.’ 

Bones shook his head. 

‘No, _you_ were right. We can’t risk anyone noticing we’ve been there.’ He shrugged. ‘There’s a reason why you’re the one who makes the command decisions.’

Jim took his glove off and hastily wiped his face with the back of his hand. 

‘I made a note of where the wreck is,’ he said. ‘When we get back, we’ll let the authorities know.’ 

‘Good.’ He patted him on the shoulder and then looked ahead. ‘What do you think? Another hour?’ 

Jim tried to judge the distance. 

‘Less, I think.’ 

‘Well then.’ Bones hooked his thumbs around his shoulder-straps. ‘Shall we?’ 

Jim smiled half-heartedly, feeling rather embarrassed but also grateful. 

‘Let’s.’ 

When they reached the caves, the sun had started setting. McCoy turned his tricorder on. 

‘Anything?’ Jim asked. He shook his head and closed the tricorder. 

‘No lifeforms apart from us.’ 

Jim nodded his acknowledgement, both relieved and disappointed. 

‘Let’s find this well, then.’ 

They stayed together, picking their way up the rocky ground. Not much sand had blown between the small mountainous conglomeration. The sand there was lay in the dips in the stone, like puddles might on sea-side rocks. Many of the caves they found were no more than alcoves, hardly large enough to step into. They climbed upwards, the incline so slight Jim did not notice it at first. It was the sharp pain in his knees which tipped him off. 

‘This is like a natural fortress,’ McCoy said, panting. 

‘It is,’ Jim said, pausing to let him catch up and to rest his knees. McCoy was about to answer, but Jim raised his hand, silencing him. They both listened. 

‘I can hear water,’ Jim said. ‘It’s coming from there.’ He pointed ahead of them. Not waiting for a reply, he hurried towards the sound. A few metres ahead was the mouth of a cave. When he first stepped in, he thought it was as shallow as the ones they had seen during their ascent. As he pressed further, it broadened. The sound of a stream echoed between the walls. Jim pulled out his torch. The beam fell on the reddish stone. He directed it towards the source of the sound. The stonework looked old, but the well was unmistakable. Behind him, McCoy entered the cave. 

‘There it is,’ he said. Drawing his own torch, he went over to the well and took his backpack off. He took out some rope, tied an empty bottle to one end and threw it down the well. It took several seconds for a splash to be heard. When it did, it echoed through the cave. McCoy laughed. 

Jim took off his backpack too and shone his torch around the cave. The ground was worn almost completely flat. On one side, opposite the well, there was something that he thought might be an opening to another cave. At the adjacent wall, fragments of rock lay gathered. Jim crossed to inspect it. He put his hand against the wall. It was rough where the others were even. 

He was awoken from his thoughts by the sound of McCoy pulling the bottle out of the well. 

‘Alright, let’s have a look.’ Taking out his tricorder, he poured some of the water on a slide and pushed it into the machine. There was a moment’s rumbling as it calculated, then a beep. ‘It’s drinkable,’ he announced. ‘No parasites or pathogens. Very pure.’ He picked up the bottle and took a swig from it. Then he offered it to Jim, who took it and drank. The water was cold and tasted far better than the stuff they had carried for almost two days. When he handed back the flask, McCoy had turned his torch to one of the walls. 

‘What is that?’ he asked, indicating a difference in colour at about eye-level close to the well. Jim stepped a little closer. It was not part of the rock, but pigment. When he caught it at a new angle, he thought it looked like charcoal. Also, he recognised what it was. 

‘It’s an abecedary,’ he said. 

‘What?’ 

‘Someone’s been practicing writing the alphabet. It must be very old. Just look at the letter-forms.’ 

McCoy made a surprised sound. He swept his torch over the wall. 

‘There seems to be more.’

Jim took a few steps back and raised his torch. The two narrow beams danced over the walls. At first, he saw nothing. Then the pigment caught the light. He gasped. 

‘What is it?’ 

‘They’re names.’ Slowly, he moved the torch over the wall as he read them. Satok – Tonar – Skon – Radak… ‘There must be hundreds of them.’ The beam from his torch caught another spine of letters. The determinator was not that of an ordinary name. ‘I know what this place is.’ He walked to the corner opposite the well. 

‘Jim, wait a minute. We don’t know what’s in the rest of the cave…’ 

Jim ignored him. The passage he had spotted was narrow at first, but then, suddenly, the walls opened up into another chamber. For a moment, he thought he was wrong. He saw none of the things he had expected. Instead, there was a pile of stones in the middle of the cave. Putting the torch between his teeth, Jim started pushing the stones away. 

‘Jim, what the hell are you doing?’ McCoy said, stepping into the chamber. ‘Be careful.’ 

Jim stopped his digging. Instead he reached into the cairn and, gently, lifted up what he had found. In his hands rested a sandstone head. At the corner of the lips, remnants of green paint could be seen. The eyes were still dark with coal. Her stern gaze met his. The body must have been destroyed, and the boss of her helmet had been knocked off, but it was impossible not to recognise her. 

‘What is that?’ McCoy asked, hushed. 

‘K’Tarek,’ Jim said. ‘She’s a warrior goddess. This is a shrine. All those names were pilgrims. They were leaving their mark, or commemorating the dead.’ 

He stepped away from the rubble and placed the head on a natural shelf in the chamber wall. 

‘What do you think happened to it?’ 

Not looking away from the statue, Jim answered: 

‘The Kesaya. All that stone has phaser burns on it. I think they tried to erase some of the names – there was debris by one of the walls. I don’t know if they couldn’t be bothered to destroy all of them, or if they just didn’t notice the ones we saw.’ 

When he looked at McCoy, he saw how he sighed and shook his head. 

‘Barbarians,’ he muttered. Then he turned. ‘I’m going to fill our water-bottles. Come have something to eat.’ 

Jim did not follow him. Instead he stayed, looking around the chamber. It was roughly circular and the wall was as smooth as in the first cave, worn down by centuries of feet. The walls were rough and cracked. In places, he could see the remnants of paint. It must have been a sight to see when it was all intact. He put down the torch on the cairn, directed towards the disembodied head of the goddess. In the half-light, it looked almost alive. Unthinkingly, Jim rubbed his palms together. This place both intrigued and unsettled him. He had an urge to do something that he had never done, and he was not sure he should do. It would be breaking sacred law, but standing in this cave, watched by the stone head, it made sense to do.

Jim let his hands fall and turned towards the icon. He was not sure what the proper way to do this was, but he would try his best. Out of habit rather than any Vulcan custom, he pulled his hood over his head. Then he took Spock’s calligraphy exercise out of his pocket. Holding it in both hands, he stepped closer to the goddess’ head. He hesitated for a moment about where to put it. In the end, he placed it beside the sculpture, half-pushed-in under the edge of the stone helmet. As he placed it there, he said: 

‘Please keep Spock safe.’ 

He stood for a moment, feeling it was the right thing to do. When he left, he did not turn his back on the sculpture until he reached the passage. As he followed it, he pushed down his hood again. He did not want to explain to Bones what he had done. 

McCoy seemed not to have noticed his absence. He had made a small fire and put water to boil for the contents of the food-packs. He seemed to be killing the time by looking at the old writing. 

‘I’m having trouble reading this stuff,’ he admitted. ‘It’s too archaic for me.’ 

‘I can’t pretend I’m not pleased that there is something Vulcan I know better than you,’ Jim said. 

‘The determinators look odd,’ McCoy said. He shone the light on the name at the centre of the wall. ‘What does that mean? That’s not the ordinary way to indicate a name.’ 

‘It means it’s the name of a god,’ Jim said. ‘They still sometimes use it.’ 

‘Oh I see.’ He moved the torch’s beam. ‘What about that? There’s a bunch of these. They look ordinary enough, but… Or is it just that they’ve written their names close?’ Two spines, each bearing one name, ran vertically. The lower horizontal stroke of the name determinator looked ordinary, but the upper stroke was far longer, running between the two spines. 

‘You’ve never had to sign paperwork in Vulcan,’ Jim said with a smile. McCoy shone the torch on him. 

‘What is that supposed to mean?’ 

‘It indicates a bond. It’s not used in text, but if a couple have to sign anything, that’s how you do it. It’s a little like an old Earth sigil.’ 

McCoy turned the torch back at the wall. He moved it slowly over the spines of the names, reading each one. Then he lowered the torch. 

‘It’s not a coincidence that there are no women’s names, is it?’ 

Jim shook his head. 

‘For a long time, it was a male-only cult. K’Tarek was worshipped as the protector of the _t’hy’la_. My understanding of it is that as _t’hy’la_ were brothers of a kind, they needed a mother, and K’Tarek is a virgin warrior goddess, who needs an army to lead into battle. Perhaps that’s a human interpretation, but it’s how I think of it.’ 

McCoy smiled. 

‘Huh.’ He raised the torch again. This time, Jim read the names with him. Some were written alone – perhaps passing merchants, or young men who had not yet bonded. In many, he thought he could see two different hands in the writing, the swirls and circles in dialogue and harmony with one another. Then there were the double names written in only one hand, with a line through the uniting stroke. Every time, one of those names was followed by a phrase: _ik-se-pak_. “Menos; Verrin, who is lost”; “Radak; Evoras, who is lost”; “Ayan; Taurik, who is lost”. He wondered how long ago those grieving survivors wrote their bondmates’ names on this wall. It must be hundreds of years ago, perhaps even thousands. Still it felt close. Their signatures contained them, allowing travellers years after their deaths to know some part of them. 

It came over him quickly. A chill ran through him and for a second, his vision blackened. Somewhere far away, he heard a surprised shout. Then the sounds came closer again. Someone was holding onto him, saying his name, manoeuvring him onto the ground. He tried to speak, but he was shaking so hard his teeth chattered.

‘Jim, it’s alright, just stay with me. You’ll be fine.’ Though he could not focus his eyes, he could make out McCoy’s outline above him. He felt him pulling a blanket around him. ‘Just hang in there, Jim.’ The medical scanner whirred.

The shaking subsided a little. His vision slipped into focus. He tried to sit up. 

‘Don’t you even try,’ McCoy said and pushed him down. He lay down again. Even if the dizziness and shaking was mostly gone, he felt drained. He watched as Bones checked the scanner. Whatever it said was not what he had expected. 

‘What does it say?’ he asked. 

McCoy grimaced. 

‘That you’re fine. Elevated heart-rate and blood-pressure, but nothing alarming.’ 

Jim pushed himself up. This time, McCoy did not make him lie down again. Instead, he looked at him in confusion. 

‘I thought…’ He put down the scanner and rubbed his forehead with a groan. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘Are you feeling alright, Bones?’ 

McCoy pushed his eyes closed and nodded. 

‘Just shaken, I suppose.’ When he opened his eyes, he glanced over towards the well. There was nothing there. ‘Probably just exhaustion,’ he murmured. ‘My head feels funny.’ Again, his eyes darted towards the well, as if he had heard something. Jim took hold of his shoulder. 

‘Bones, focus,’ he said. ‘You should take your medication.’ 

‘My…’ He seemed to forget what he was saying. Instead, he rubbed his forehead again. Not asking for permission, Jim unclipped the small medkit from his friend’s belt. His hands felt clumsy, but he was the more capable of them for now. He found an ampoule of lexorin and snapped it into the chamber of the hypo. McCoy did not resist when he pushed it into his arm. Almost at once, his glazed-over eyes changed. He blinked a few times and looked from the hypospray to Jim. When Jim offered it to him, he took it and, not even looking at what he was doing, turned on the sterilisation setting. 

‘You shouldn’t neglect that,’ Jim said, aware that he was expressing an opinion of something that McCoy did not really want him to know about. 

‘I haven’t,’ he said, truthfully. ‘I don’t know what happened.’ He turned the sterilisation setting off and put the hypo back in the medkit. ‘Or no, I do. You scared me half to death.’ 

Now that the crisis was over, Jim realised he was still shaking. McCoy picked up his scanner again and turned it on. 

‘How are you feeling?’ he asked.

‘Shaky,’ he answered. ‘Like I’m coming down with flu.’ 

McCoy turned the scanner off and felt his forehead. 

‘Are you in any pain?’

He shook his head. With a clarity that seemed impossible in his current state, he knew what was wrong.

‘Bones, there’s nothing wrong with me. I’m fine.’

‘You don’t look it,’ he snapped. Then he admitted: ‘My scanner might agree with you, but I don’t like it.’ 

‘It’s not physical,’ he explained. Now McCoy looked directly at him. 

‘In that case, that was some panic attack,’ he said, clearly not believing him. ‘Don’t know if I’ve seen anything like it.’ 

Jim shook his head. 

‘No, it’s not _me_.’ Another shiver went through him. ‘Something’s happened to Spock.’


	4. Part IV

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warnings for this chapter: physical violence, discussion of undue influence, reference to minor character illness and death, brief mention of suicidal ideation.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies that it has taken me so long to post this. I have been swamped with real life things for the past month and a half. It will definitely not be that long a wait for the next chapter!

The first thing he registered when he regained consciousness was the sand. He was lying facedown, grains of sand cutting into his cheek. It was only a minor discomfort, outdone by the pain in the rest of his body. The way his head was throbbing, paired with the fact that he could not quite remember what had happened, made him suspect he may be suffering from concussion. He could not seem to move his arms…

Spock’s mind caught up. The pain in his wrists was not the result of some injury, but due to the manacles keeping him immobilised. The memory of the minutes before he had been knocked unconscious came back to him, out of order and blurry, but intact enough that he could piece them together. He fought the impulse to move and instead concentrated on listening. There was the sound of voices, just on the edge of his hearing. 

‘Reason?’ 

‘Unclear, but presumably hostile. They were armed.’

They had been, Spock thought. He remembered catching sight of a landspeeder in the distance and telling T’Son and Kelek to take out their phasers. When the second speeder appeared, he had drawn his own. 

He heard the sound of boots against the sand, moving closer to him. 

‘I trust you followed protocol.’ 

‘Affirmative. We confirmed that no one was left alive.’ 

‘Apart from that one.’ 

‘As protocol dictates.’ 

‘By what criteria was he chosen?’ 

‘He appeared to be in command. He gave the others orders.’ 

‘And he was the eldest,’ said another voice. ‘That makes the likelihood of familiar ties greater.’ 

‘Both logical reasons.’

He could feel the vibration of their footsteps through the sand now. He reasserted control over himself, making it appear as if he were still passed out. A hand grabbed his shoulder and rolled him over, onto his back. His arms became trapped behind his body, making the handcuffs dig into his wrists. The pain made him flinch, enough that his ruse to appear unconscious would not work. He opened his eyes, or tried. He could only see out of the left. 

At first he was blinded by the light. Judging by the angle and the heat, it was soon after dawn. His sight adjusted quickly. Three individuals stood over him, all dressed in black. Two still had their hood up, although the scarves were pulled down from their faces. The third was bareheaded. He appeared a few years older than the other two, but that barely brought him into his thirties. Spock knew his face – he had come across him in his research, but he could not recall his name. 

‘He has a curious face,’ the familiar man said. 

‘Specify,’ said one of his lieutenants. 

‘He has a most uncommon bone-structure.’ He spoke in a matter-of-fact voice, but his face was far less mobile than the average Vulcan’s. Spock was not sure he had ever seen anyone apart from the Masters at Gol so unaffected by emotion. 

The woman in the group pushed her hood down to give herself more light. Her hair was cut almost like a man’s; Spock wondered if it was for convenience or for some ideological reason. The Kesaya had on occasion expressed their disgust with the distractions of sex. It may be in keeping with that thought to strive for androgyny. 

Even as he made these observations, he saw how she watched him, and how her eyes narrowed. 

‘I know who he is.’ The other two looked at her and then at the captive. ‘He’s Spock.’ 

Something passed through the group – shock or surprise, perhaps. Spock only looked back at them. He saw a look of disgust on the face of the second lieutenant. The commander’s mien did not change. 

‘Sit him up,’ he instructed. The woman stepped forward and, grabbing him by the shoulder, pushed him up. Her feet had stirred up the sand., and the grains fell against his face. Now that he sat up, he felt his arms starting to cramp. The shackles were tight enough that they pulled his shoulders back and forced him to lean forward.

‘Are you Spock?’ the commander asked. With some difficulty, Spock raised his head to look at him. 

‘That is my name.’ Speaking hurt. He had not realised until now how dehydrated he was. 

The commander dropped to his haunches to study his face closer. When he spoke, it was to his lieutenants. 

‘It was the right decision to take him. He will be useful to us.’ 

‘Am I to be a hostage?’ Spock asked. 

‘That depends on your cooperation,’ the commander said. He craned his head, as if to study his face from another angle. ’Your identity should have been obvious to me from the start. Your physiognomy is clearly the result of hybridisation.’ Though his tone of voice never changed, Spock thought he could sense a mix of fascination and disgust from him. He considered how to go ahead – play ignorant, or accept that the commander knew his identity? 

‘I am in need of water,’ he said instead. The commander stood up, took a flask from his belt and threw it in front of him. Spock looked up at him. He could not let his temper get the best of him, but he was not sure the commander knew how to read his glare. Perhaps he was not intending to give him water, but only to taunt him. He drew his nerve-disruptor. Spock did not look away from him. He estimated his chances of surviving the next minute was half and half. 

‘Release his hands,’ the commander said. 

The muscles in his neck protested, and he let his head fall. Were they intending to chase him down, or was he being given a chance to drink? One of the lieutenants stepped behind him. A moment later, the pressure around his wrists was released. He pulled his shoulder-blades apart, flexed his arms and rolled his neck. The commander had the disruptor trailed on him, but he held it lazily. Then he jerked it to indicate the flask of water. 

‘Go on.’ 

This was not an execution then. Spock reached for the bottle and struggled with the cap. When it had come off and he raised the flask to his mouth, he realised that his hands were shaking. They felt weak after hours in restraints. The water splashed down his chin and front. For the moment, he did not think of the waste. The first few mouthfuls were painful against his parched tongue. He forced himself to swirl it around his mouth to get rid of the taste of copper. After another few gulps, he poured water into his hand and splashed it over his face. The right side of his face was bruised, but the swelling around his eye was not as bad as he had thought. The water made him wince at first, but within moments he felt the blood and grime that had plastered his eye shut dissolve. He took another swig of the bottle and offered it to its owner. 

‘Thank you.’ 

The commander took the bottle and handed it to one of the others. Spock rearranged his legs in a cross-legged position. 

‘You know my name. It is only fair that I should know yours.’ 

‘Do you believe you are in a position to make requests?’ he asked. The nerve disruptor moved slightly higher, from his heart to his head. 

‘I do not,’ Spock said. ‘But there is no need to dispense with courtesy.’ 

‘Courtesy is simply falsehoods hidden in words.’ 

‘Courtesy is a form of pragmatics which serves a clear purpose in communication. A language without it has not yet been recorded in this galaxy.’ 

‘Irrelevant,’ he said. 

Spock sat up straighter and pushed his knees down against the ground, hands lying empty in his lap. It was the best position he could muster while still wearing boots. 

‘You stated that the question of my being a hostage or not depended on my cooperation,’ he said. ‘That implies that you have some interest in persuading me to help your cause. For that to occur, there must be trust.’ 

‘No such thing was implied,’ the commander said. Spock felt he was, as humans would say, on thin ice. The commander had not changed either his face or his tone, but Spock was certain he was annoying him. If he were to make him lose control, it would undermine his power within the organisation. On the other hand, it may push him to kill. In the moment it took him to do that analysis, it seemed as if the commander had done something similar. He was not going to let him speak freely. 

‘What is your business here?’ 

‘I wished to survey some fossil deposits in the foothills,’ Spock said. Now he thought he could see the anger in the commander’s eyes. 

‘You are a spy.’ 

‘Incorrect. I am a scientist.’ 

The commander took his finger off the disruptor’s trigger and grabbed the body of the weapon instead. The blow fell so quickly that Spock did not have time to brace himself. The next moment, he was lying on the ground, pain coursing through his jaw. He coughed and felt how flecks of blood sprayed from his lips. There was something hard just under his tongue. He spat out the tooth fragment.

‘You wish to know my name?’ the commander said. 

His head was spinning, but Spock pushed himself up. He spat again. The gob of blood created a crater in the sand. He looked up at his captor.

‘Yes.’ 

‘I am Tavin. I am Valeris’ kinsman.’ 

The name sparked a memory. Tavin, son of Tevik – educated in Shi’Kahr – studied inorganic biology at the Science Academy – graduated with honours – abandoned his doctoral studies around the same time as the attempted assassination of the president. He was one of the many students Spock had confirmed had links to the Kesaya and had gone missing from their places of study. If he was not mistaken, Tavin had even penned some of the essays that had been distributed in the early days, while he was still a student. However, he had not known that he was related to Valeris. That would have made him remember the young man more clearly. 

‘I see,’ Spock said. There was little else to say. 

‘It is because of you my kinswoman will live out her life on a prison colony.’ 

‘I did not condemn Valeris. Her own actions did.’ 

Tavin’s hand clenched around his disruptor. His face remained impassive. Spock started to wonder if he had purposefully damaged the nerves to prevent his emotions from showing. 

‘At your next arrogant comment, I will strike you again, _tvee’okh_.’ 

It was many years since he had been called that – perhaps not since he was a child, when his peers had throw that insult usually reserved for non-Vulcans at him. He was going about this the wrong way, he realised. His responses only provoked his captor, just as they had provoked his bullies. _Sixty years later and I still have not learned,_ he thought. Making Tavin lose face was not worth his life. He did not have the concentration to formulate another plan here and now. He still felt disorientated after his period of unconsciousness, and his broken tooth was throbbing. 

‘Why are you here?’ Tavin repeated. Spock did not answer. From the corner of his eye, he saw Tavin taking a firmer grip of the disruptor, getting ready to strike. He wanted to point out the contradiction – he had said he would hit him next time he spoke, and he had stayed silent. Pointing out the lack of logic would not help him. Thinking quickly felt much like trying to run after just having been stunned, but he forced his mind through it. His first priority was to stay alive. Either his refusal to confess might keep them curious enough that they would spare him, or an admission of guilt would make them more amenable to him. On the other hand, if he confessed to being a spy, they might well kill him to make sure he saw as little as possible, and if he said nothing, Tavin might kill him out of frustration. He could not tell what route had the better chance of survival. 

Inaction was the best response. He stayed silent, bracing himself for the blow. It did not come. Instead, Tavin put the nerve disruptor back in his belt. 

‘Restrain him,’ he said. ‘Lock him up. I want him starved.’ 

The lieutenants grabbed hold of him. Spock did not put up a fight, but allowed them to handcuff him again. The cuffs were uncomfortable against his skin, but they did not yet cause him pain. They would, soon enough. 

His two captors hauled him to his feet and forced him to walk. They were just on the outskirts of a camp-site. Semi-permanent tents had been erected. He was marched past a group hanging washing to dry in the sun, and another who were looking over a cache of weapons. Everyone looked up as they passed. Some seemed merely curious, but a few, he was certain, recognised him. 

He saw where they were going now. Ahead of them was something that looked mostly like a dug-out. A sturdy door, very unlike the tent’s magnetic closings, had been set in one of the walls. An armed guard stood in front of it. When he saw them coming, he turned and unlocked the door. It could have been a deposit of arms, explosives or fuel, Spock thought, but that did not seem likely if they would keep him there. They were not foolish enough to put a suspected spy together with dangerous materials. As they drew closer to the open door, Spock saw he was right. The dug-out seemed empty. 

‘Tavin said to put this one away,’ said the female lieutenant. The guard leaned against the door and surveyed him. 

‘He’s an ugly one.’ 

‘That’s because he’s a half-breed. He has human in him.’ 

She pushed him against the opening. 

‘Wait,’ said the guard. The lieutenant grabbed Spock by both arms and forced him around. The guard looked at him closer. Spock kept his eyes averted, unwilling to antagonise him. For that reason, he did not see how the guard’s mouth moved. His only warning was the sound of him spitting. The saliva hit him on the cheek, splashing into his eye. Despite himself, he flinched. He was spun him around and pushed.

Spock stumbled into the dug-out with the force of the push, then skidded on his soles and fell. He landed hard on his side. Rolling forward a little, he inched his arm from under his body. They had not even bothered to take off the handcuffs. Either they simply had not considered it, or it was an attempt at torture. Conscious or not, they would be successful in inflicting pain. Spock put his head down onto the ground and exhaled. He could not tell what time it was, but it must be mid-morning. His communicator must still be in the wreckage, or lost in the sands around it. Jim would be waiting for the call. He shut his eyes tightly. _Forgive me, Jim_. He knew he was too far away to feel the projected thought, but he extended it nevertheless. The thought of Jim waiting for a call that would not come filled him with equal parts guilt and sorrow. 

‘There is water.’

Spock’s head shot up. He had thought he was alone, but now he heard someone on the other side of the room. His eyes adjusted to the dark. He could just about make out a shape in the shadows. 

‘Where?’ he asked. His voice was still not much more than a rasp. He was so thirsty…

‘It is in a bowl, four feet to your left, in line with your shoulders,’ the voice, a measured alto, said. ‘Do not spill it. They will not give us more if you do.’ 

Clumsily, Spock pushed himself up onto his knees and shuffled forward. As she had said, there was a clay bowl, two-thirds full of clear water. It took him a moment to decide how to drink from it. Their captors must have counted on this as yet another humiliation. Spock would take the humiliation, if only he was allowed to drink. He leaned over the bowl and gulped at the water like a quadruped at an oasis. He had to reign himself in not to drink it all. Too much water would make him sick, and his fellow prisoner would need to drink too. 

‘Thank you.’ He pushed himself away from the bowl of water, careful not to knock it over. Now that he was closer, he saw more of the other prisoner. She was dressed in brown desert-gear not unlike his own. Her headscarf was still securely pinned around her hair – Spock was surprised they had not taken the pins out of it. That may come in handy later. From where she sat in the darkened corner, he could feel her watching him. 

‘You have aged, Spock.’ 

‘Are we acquainted?’ 

The prisoner leaned forward precariously, her hands secured behind her back like his. The light from the small window at the ceiling hit her face. Spock’s first thought was that his concussion was worse than he had first thought, or that the dehydration was making him hallucinate. But no, that could not be true. That was not logical. He was not feeling uninjured, but by no means bad enough for this. And if he would hallucinate, why would his brain pick this of all things? That argument may be discounted – even a fully healthy brain did not make logical choices of memories and references to bring up. An injured one could not be held to those standards either. There were other things that discounted it as a hallucination. The brain did not create new images, only recycled old impressions. The way her face had been lined, the few hairs that escaped from her headscarf, the cracks to her lip were all too realistic to be figments of his imagination. 

He could not think what greeting to use. Her name would suffice.

‘T’Pring.’ 

‘It is needless to say that I am surprised at your presence,’ T’Pring said. ‘It is difficult to know which rumours to believe of you.’ 

‘I am certain most are untrue,’ Spock said. He pulled himself backwards, towards the opposite wall. It took some time to find a good position, but eventually he managed to lean against the wall so that some of the strain was taken away from his arms. He let his eyes close. Little by little, his impressions of the dug-out, his fellow prisoner, and the people moving outside the locked door faded. His body was a shell, not him. The pain fell away. He tried to go deeper, but he could not go beyond the first stages of meditation. The disorientation kept him there, in the shallow parts of his mind. He did not dare to attempt a healing trance – he could not afford to be unresponsive for as much as a minute. Even if the sense of disorientation may ease, there were other pain to come, from the restraints, the promised starvation, even dehydration. It was only a question of enduring it, he told himself. That was all he could do. Before he could stop himself, he thought of Jim, waiting for the call-in. He would be climbing on the walls, as McCoy would put it. Spock was certain – from experience or through the bond? – that even if he would stick to the plan, Jim knew that something had happened. Perhaps it was only a bad feeling, but all the same he knew. 

The sound of the lock turning shook him out of his meditative state. A man, dressed in the same shade of dark grey like the others and carrying a phaser, stepped in. Spock looked through the doorway. The guard blotted out almost all the sunlight. Looking back at the armed man, he realised that he was not there for him. He did not even spare him a glance. Instead, he walked over to T’Pring, grabbed her by the arm and pulled her to her feet. She let herself be led away, her head down. The door slammed shut again, leaving him in half darkness. 

With the solitude came a feeling of disquiet. A new bout of pain shot through his arms. He took a deep breath through his nose, but the dank smells of the dug-out made him gag. He breathed through his mouth instead. The inside of his mouth was so dry that the rush of air hurt. He wanted another drink of water, but for all he knew, T’Pring may need it when she came back. If she came back. Why had she been taken outside, and for that matter, why was she here? Perhaps the odds of this encounter were not as small as they seemed to him. Nevertheless, the coincidence of their presence put him on edge.

Spock pushed aside his emotions. They would not lead him anywhere. Instead, he closed his eyes and tried to remember everything he had seen since regaining consciousness. This remained a reconnaissance mission. The information he could collect would be invaluable, at long as he survived. Survival was the first goal. The second was freedom. He would consider that later. Now, he must commit to memory every detail he had seen. He must remember the faces of those he had met, their names and their demeanours, the make of their weapons, any noticeable details of their clothes or their tents or their gear, the position of their camp. He thought through his experiences, pausing to imprint the images on his mind.

Half an hour after the guards had retrieved T’Pring, the door unlocked again. Spock opened his eyes and watched as she stepped in. They did not shove her. Perhaps she was simply better behaved as a prisoner, or they had fewer reasons to hate her. She did not move until after the door was locked behind her. Spock noticed that her headscarf had been rearranged. When she turned to walk to the spot where she had sat before, he saw her hands, shackled behind her back. The dirt under her fingernails was gone. 

T’Pring did not sit down, but remained on her feet. The silence felt tense. Spock sat up a little straighter and closed his eyes again. Again, he went through what he had seen, adding these new details. There was no way to know what would become important. 

All he should do was to record observable facts. Speculations had no room in intelligence collection. However well he knew this, it was difficult to stop one part of his mind from extrapolating. It had taken his observations of the improbability of T’Pring’s presence, her clean hands, the way they had not manhandled her, and run with them. He forced himself back to the task of collecting data. 

His thoughts were disturbed again. 

‘It is unclear to me what the social protocol in a situation like this is, but not speaking feels curious.’ 

Spock opened his eyes. T’Pring was still standing up in the opposite corner of the room. 

‘I do not wish to speak.’ 

He closed his eyes again. 

‘Explain,’ T’Pring said. With a sigh, he abandoned his attempt to go over his memories one more time. 

‘I do not wish to speak because I have nothing to say.’ 

She watched him for a moment, as if evaluating him. 

‘What are your reasons?’ 

‘They are my own.’ 

They fell silent again. Some fifteen minutes later, as if there had been no pause, T’Pring said: 

‘I wish to hear them nevertheless.’ Her face remained as it had been, the same haughty pout, even if it had softened a little with the years. 

‘Why?’ 

‘It is not logical to isolate oneself in an already perilous situation.’

‘As a good friend of mine would put it, “damn logic”,’ Spock said, keeping his voice calm. 

‘Then your reasons to refuse to communicate are irrational.’ It was a statement, not a question. 

‘They are not,’ he said. 

‘They are not the result of your antipathy towards me due to my previous actions?’

That was a question. Spock weighed his alternatives – call the bluff, or play along? If he did the latter, he may be able to obtain more information. On the other hand, he may divulge it too. He was not certain he could keep up such a charade without interruption. It was better to break the illusion. 

‘I do not wish to speak because I do not trust you.’ 

‘You have no reason not to trust me,’ she observed. ‘We have not had any dealings since the termination of our bond.’ 

‘Neither do I have any reason _to_ trust you,’ Spock said. ‘And a number of facts would indicate that I am right not to.’ 

‘Specify.’  
‘Your presence here.’ 

T’Pring raised an eyebrow.

‘I do not follow your reasoning.’ 

Spock shifted position again to alleviate the strain in his shoulders. He did not speak until he could watch her closely for any reaction.

‘If I were my captor, I would use any means necessary to extract the information I wanted.’

T’Pring’s face did not change.

‘That hypothetical is irrelevant, and indeed nonsensical.’ 

‘It is not,’ Spock said. ‘It is based on observation. Fact: you have never hesitated to use logic to further your own goals. Fact: neither do the Kesaya. Fact: the probability that you and I would meet in this way is small enough that we must consider that it was not down to chance.’ 

Now a small crease appeared between T’Pring’s brows. 

‘You believe I am a plant.’ She let out her breath slowly through her nose, making her nostrils flare. ‘You believe I am one of them.’ 

‘It is a possibility I cannot discount.’ 

Leaning her shoulders against the wall and, pushing her feet against the dirt floor, slid down into a sitting position. He could not see her face quite as well now. 

‘I have been a captive for ten days,’ she stated. 

‘You look remarkably well for that,’ Spock said. He saw how T’Pring looked directly at him now. 

‘I have had the sense not to provoke them,’ she said. ‘They allow me to wash once a day. They give me food. I have suffered only the minimum of physical abuse.’ 

Spock paused, considering what she was saying. He did not feel that his gut feeling was wrong, but what she said made sense. 

‘How were you captured?’ 

T’Pring turned the question around. 

‘It was you who indicated that you did not trust me. How were you captured?’ 

‘We walked into an ambush,’ he said. ‘I, and two others. They were both killed.’  
‘Your theory that I am a plant is based on probabilities,’ T’Pring observed. ‘That implies that they knew who they had when they spared you.’ 

‘Not necessarily,’ Spock said. ‘They appeared genuinely ignorant at first.’ 

‘And there was enough time to install me in this cell between the moment when they realised who you were and when they took you here?’ 

‘I would estimate so.’ 

Her jaw tensed. 

‘Does this place look like a place that was uninhabited until an hour ago? Does it smell like it?’ 

‘I did not state that it had been uninhabited,’ Spock said. ‘There may have been other captives.’

‘Why did you venture into the Tanit desert?’ 

‘It is not off-limits.’ 

‘You must have had a goal.’ 

‘I was conducting a geological survey.’ 

T’Pring’s eyes narrowed; her questioning had not had the outcome she had hoped. 

‘I have answered your questions,’ Spock said. ‘I hope you will answer mine. How were you captured? Why did _you_ venture into the Tanit desert?’ 

T’Pring averted her eyes. He could only see the silhouette of her profile now. 

‘I came for my daughter.’ 

She spoke so softly he almost did not hear her. 

‘Your daughter?’ he repeated. 

‘Correct.’ 

‘Had she been taken before you?’ 

‘No.’ T’Pring shifted, leaning forward against her knees and bowing her head. ‘She went missing twenty-seven days ago.’ Then she added: ‘She ran away.’ 

Spock found himself unable to answer. He cursed himself for his own foolishness – to imagine that this was a conflict between him and the Kesaya alone… But he would have preferred to feel that embarrassment, instead of the shame that T’Pring’s hunched form woke in him. Straining against her own muscles, she rested her forehead against her knees. He could not see her face, but he could hear her breathing, slow and deep, like the kind of meditative exercise they taught children to restrain their emotions. Spock leaned his head against the wall, listening to that sound. It was only right that he should suffer.

The light that seeped in through the small window changed angles as the sun climbed the sky. Spock watched as the rectangle of light moved from the far end of the dug-out towards him. It was almost at his feet when T’Pring moved. She let her legs stretch out, relaxed her shoulders and leaned back against the wall. In response, Spock straightened up. They were both aware of the other, but both reluctant to speak. Was he too quick to believe her? Spock wondered. Was this simply a ruse, where he assumed that any display of emotion proved that complete adherence to logic was impossible? He did not think so. T’Pring had been right when she had asked whether they would really have time to stage her captivity in the time between recognising him and locking him up. Also, if they had done so, why would they come to fetch her so soon afterwards? If this was a bluff, they would have avoided something so suspect. _And if it’s a double-bluff?_ he asked himself. He did not have an answer. There was no way of knowing it was not. What he did know was that he believed T’Pring’s reaction to be genuine. How he knew that he could not say – perhaps simply intuition, perhaps some residue of the bond they had had. All the same, he would listen to his first impressions. 

‘T’Pring, I ask for forgiveness.’ 

It took a moment before there was a response. 

‘You have it.’ 

‘What is your daughter’s name?’ he asked. 

Again, there was a pause.

‘T’Rea.’

Spock remembered that name. There were not many very young people who were known to have connections with the Kesaya, but he had come across a number. The case of T’Rea – fourteen years old, a student at Kiri-kin-tha School in Shi’Kahr – had registered in particular because he had been unable to find a patronymic for the girl. Her clan had appeared on all official papers, of course, but never any mention of her father’s name. It was not unheard of, and he had not spent any time on the issue. Now, with no list of other radicalised young people who were unaccounted for distracting him, he realised what it meant. He should have realised it as soon as he had read her name, but it was only when he heard T’Pring say it that he connected it to the name it was derived from. Rhea was the goddess of mourning. 

‘What happened to Stonn?’ he asked. 

‘He died,’ T’Pring said simply. There was nothing simple about the emotion on her voice. ‘Four months before T’Rea was born.’

‘I grieve with thee.’ 

She bowed her head in acknowledgement. 

‘Was it… expected?’ He hesitated to use that word, but did not know which else to use. 

‘By the time he died, yes. But when he fell ill… no.’ The pause in her voice was quite unlike her usual speech-pattern. 

‘What happened?’ 

‘He developed brain cancer, at some point before…’ Again, a pause. ‘Before T’Rea’s conception. Had it been at any other time, it would not have been fatal. It may have gone undetected for years. But the hormones accelerated the growth of the tumour. It changed him. He stopped recognising our first daughter. He insisted she had not been born yet. From that point on, the deterioration happened quickly. Within half a year, he could not walk, or speak, or meld.’

They sat in silence for a long time. Spock did not know what to say to what she had said. He could not stop himself from imagining the scene – T’Pring, heavily pregnant, sitting together with her daughter at the bedside of what was left of Stonn. She had not said how it had ended. Had he finally expired, or had she made the decision to end his suffering? How much did her older daughter remember of her father’s death? Did she recall how he had mistaken her for his unborn child? 

In parallel came other thoughts. He thought of McCoy, who had made that decision to let his father die, only months before they found a cure for his illness. On Vulcan, such a decision was far less taboo than among humans, but it nevertheless disturbed him. Would he ever have to make that decision himself? The scene he had imagined transformed. Gone was the young family. Instead it was him, holding a wizened hand, McCoy standing at the foot of the bed with a frown on his face, Jim looking from one to the other without recognising them.

Forcefully, he pushed away the image. If he allowed himself to get lost in fears and fixations, he would not get out of here. 

‘What is your eldest daughter’s name?’ he asked instead. 

‘T’Pren.’ 

He made the calculations in his head. 

‘She must be twenty-one.’ 

‘Correct.’ 

‘Does she know you are here?’ 

T’Pring shifted again. The shackles had clearly started to bother her. 

‘Not entirely,’ she said. ‘She knew I set off to look for T’Rea, but not where I went.’ 

‘Then she does not know you have been captured.’ 

She shook her head. 

‘No. She does not know.’ 

‘Was that intentional?’ 

‘Specify.’ 

‘Withholding the specifics of your plan,’ he explained. ‘In order to spare her the worry?’ 

T’Pring did not answer. 

‘If they kill you, she will not know that her mother is dead.’ 

‘Then she will keep hoping.’ 

‘It would be false hope.’ 

‘But hope nevertheless.’ 

They fell silent again. This time, it was T’Pring who broke the silence. 

‘Do you have children?’ 

‘No,’ Spock said. 

‘I assumed so.’ 

‘Assumptions are hazardous,’ Spock said. ‘There are alternative ways of having children.’

‘True.’ Her thoughts changed track. ‘Have you considered that our marriage would have meant the end of my family’s bloodline?’ 

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I believe that was not entirely unintended.’ 

‘It is illogical, using a child to punish the parents.’ 

‘More than illogical,’ Spock said. ‘Cruel. We were innocents.’ 

‘And yet we were punished. It may have been explained to me as an honour, to be bonded to a member of the S’chn T’gai clan, but it was a punishment.’ 

‘Yes,’ Spock said. There had been a strange neatness to the decision, he thought. On the surface, the match seemed very respectable – an intelligent boy of a prominent family and a pretty, well-behaved girl with a good education. But when one looked closer, that picture fell apart. That son of the aristocracy was a half-breed that betrayed his father’s shameful choice of spouse, a sickly weakling who may not survive to adulthood. Even if he did, he would be unable to have children, and was more likely than not something of a eunuch whose blood would never burn. The young bride was of a disgraced family, her father having been ousted from the High Council after a number of scandals, each more unsavoury than the last. Stories of corruption and embezzlement, even whispers of things that a child did not understand, would not stop circulating.

But Spock could not be blamed for his parentage, and T’Pring could not be blamed for her father’s unethical behaviour. They had been pulled into that game simply as proxies. 

When T’Pring spoke, it sounded like the words were in a hurry to come out of her mouth. 

‘I refused to bond my daughters.’ 

‘That is commendable,’ Spock said. 

‘Few thought so. Even Stonn wanted a match made for T’Pren, but when the time came, he was dead, and the decision was mine.’ 

‘Why would he be in favour of such a thing?’ Spock asked, mystified. 

‘There were many arguments. A good match may help our standing. A bond would give her stability. It is tradition.’ T’Pring exhaled, less than a sigh but more than a breath. 

‘But he knew what your engagement cost you,’ Spock said. 

‘Once it was gone, it was simply another thing of the past,’ T’Pring said. ‘He may have known, but it was not his pain. Not as it was mine – or yours. The bond enslaved us. It kept us from pursuing the lives we wanted. Had I not chosen the challenge, it would have led to a loveless marriage, built only on the hopes of our parents and the calculations of the matchmaker.’ 

‘Yes. It would have been… disastrous.’ That word was the only thing he could think of to describe it. He knew all those things to be true, but it was strange to hear her speak them. He had known her mind, but he had never wanted to know it. There had been no fondness, no attraction, no mutual decisions. They had only met twice as children – first when their parents negotiated, then when the bond was established. Both those times, they have barely spoken. They had both been too shy and daunted by the strange situation. Even if they had spoken, it would have made very little difference. They had been but children.

‘My father disagreed with my choice,’ T’Pring said. 

‘And your mother?’ 

‘She died shortly after I married Stonn,’ she said. ‘According to the doctors, from a weak heart. According to my father, from shame.’ 

Spock had to stop himself from lapsing into sarcasm and saying ‘charming’. 

‘He was displeased, then.’ 

‘Yes, but he would still speak to me then. When Stonn died, he tried to help, but after I refused to find a match for T’Pren, he refused me any more aid. I believe that if I were to pass him in the street, he would not acknowledge me.’

‘Would he really not help, even in the situation you are in now?’ 

‘I presume you are referring to T’Rea, rather than my captivity.’ 

‘Yes.’ 

T’Pring shook her head. 

‘He would make clear that her actions are my fault. At times I believe that myself.’ 

‘Would you tell me?’ 

‘I have said much already. It is only fair that you speak for a while first.’ 

‘If you wish,’ Spock said. T’Pring shuffled forward on her knees and drank from the bowl. It was almost empty now. When she had sat up again, she said: 

‘I want to hear of your captain. I learned after the _kali-fee_ that he did not die.’ 

‘He did not,’ Spock said. ‘He is no longer my captain. However, he is my husband.’ 

‘An unsurprising development,’ T’Pring said. ‘When did you marry?’ 

‘Twenty-two standard years ago.’ 

She nodded. It was clear that her thoughts had wandered. 

‘Stonn and I only had thirteen years,’ she said. ‘Although the last half-year cannot really count.’ 

Spock thought of the months after the _fal-tor-pan_. They were not entirely clear in his mind. It seemed as if not having any memories brought with it an inability to form memories too. Technically, they had not been married then. Sarek’s lawyers had worked day and night to find some legal precedent that may be used to reinstate their marriage. Once Spock’s memories had come back, they had decided that it was far easier to just get married again. It was not the issue of their legal status that concerned him, but his period of amnesia. Even if he improved rapidly after they returned to Earth, it took years until his memory was completely reliable. Every time he had forgotten something from their past, or had accidentally called Jim by his rank instead of his first name, he had seen the pain in his face. It was a constant cruel reminder of the time they had lost. It had been a long time since he had lapsed like that, but he always feared it would happen again.

He did not want to share any of this. Instead, he asked: 

‘You knew, did you not? That was why you chose him to fight for you.’ 

‘I could not have avoided knowing,’ T’Pring said. ‘Even from the other side of the galaxy, it was deafening.’

‘Did you do it to spite me?’ 

‘Your hatred for me was part of my plan. I wanted you to reject me. If the way to do that was to make you hate me, I was prepared to do so.’ 

Some of the anger he had felt that day came back to him, but only for a moment. 

‘If he had died…’ Spock broke off. ‘If it were not for Doctor McCoy’s intervention, I would have killed him, and I would have had to die.’ 

‘I thought the Federation did not enforce the death penalty.’ 

‘It does not,’ Spock said. ‘But I would have found a way.’

‘But he did not die,’ T’Pring said. 

‘No. He did not.’ 

Spock found himself smiling. He felt T’Pring look at him, but in confusion or disgust he did not know. In another situation, he would have made the effort to suppress his smile, but now he did not. Smiling at the thought of Jim was an act of defiance in this place. He felt reluctant to talk now. There was no getting away from the warmth he felt inside himself, and he could not express that in words. It was not something that was seemly to speak of. Why was it not seemly? Because emotions were seen as distractions at best, destructive at worst – but only seen as such. Throughout his life, he had fought with his feelings, which he had conceived of as something apart from his Vulcan self. That fight had exhausted him. None of the emotions he had to control subsided. Instead they raged inside him, giving him no peace. It was not until that fateful meld with V’Ger that he had realised the mistakes he had made. Mastery of emotions could not be achieved by force of mind. Passion was a counterbalance to logic – logic a counterbalance to passion. They could not exist apart from one another. They tempered and shaped one another, like planets moving by space shaped by planets. 

It was not just him. They had all made a mistake. It was that tug between passion and logic that led people to grow so frustrated that emotions were rejected as unnatural. It was that internal battle that made people desperate enough to listen to ideologues with such ideas. They could fight the Kesaya in many ways, but to some extent, it must be a philosophical fight. It must start at the smallest level. 

‘I love him,’ he said. T’Pring raised an eyebrow, surprised. ‘Why do we not use that word?’

‘It is unseemly.’

Spock shook his head forcefully. 

‘No. It is not. At the _kali-fee_ , you said that you wanted Stonn to be your consort. Why? Was it not because you loved him?’ 

She looked away. 

‘The tense is incorrect,’ she said. 

‘In what way?’ 

‘It should be in the present, continuous. He may no longer live, but I love him.’

Spock smiled. T’Pring looked at him strangely. 

‘Your display of emotions is disconcerting.’ 

‘ _You_ just said you love Stonn. Is that not a display of emotion?’ 

She sighed. 

‘True.’ 

Spock moved slightly closer and dropped his voice.

‘I believe our captors have made a grave mistake. They refuse to understand these things, but we derive strength from the things we feel. Even those things we did not want, we can use. You and I may never have meant to enter each other’s lives, but now, our acquaintance will allow us to cooperate.’ 

T’Pring leaned in and looked him right in the eye. 

‘Are you proposing planning an escape?’ 

‘Yes.’ 

‘We are outnumbered,’ she observed. ‘It would be illogical.’ 

‘In this situation, against these foes, that may be to our advantage.’ 

She looked at him for a long moment. 

‘First tell me why you are here.’ 

He shifted a little closer, making sure he could not be heard through the door. 

‘I’m the Federation’s man in Shi’Kahr.’ 

She raised an eyebrow quizzically, clearly not picking up the reference to Earth fiction. 

‘I am conducting covert operations into the Kesaya for Federation authorities,’ he explained.

‘And yet you were caught.’

‘I may have their backing, but not their funds. I had hoped to avoid detection with a smaller group.’ 

‘You said they killed the others.’ 

Spock nodded curtly, not wanting his voice to betray him. It was not the first time he had seen such things, yet he felt deeply shaken by what he had witnessed. Perhaps the eighteen months since resigning had weakened his resolve. They had shot Kelek first, while they were still moving. Spock had tried to catch him when he collapsed, but the sudden dead weight had thrown the landspeeder off-balance. He had lost his phaser in the fall. When he pushed himself up, he just had time to see how T’Son jumped from the landspeeder as it turned almost a hundred eighty degrees and slammed into the sand. He had run towards her and helped her up. By that time they were upon them. T’Son had pushed him away, making him fall again. She had shot at several of them, but had only caused minor injuries. When they knocked the phaser out of her hand, she drew a knife and fought them hand to hand. He thought he saw her stab at least one of them badly. Then came the ear-cutting sound of a nerve-disruptor. She stopped mid-motion and convulsed as she fell. One of their attacker had taken the knife out of her limp hand. 

Spock forced his eyes close, trying to banish the image of what happened next. 

Perhaps T’Pring noticed his distress. 

‘Why is he no longer your captain?’ she asked. He opened his eyes, back in the present. ‘Were you reassigned?’ 

‘No. Starfleet policy is to keep married couples together if possible. He is retired.’ 

‘But you are not.’ 

‘From Starfleet, yes, but I can be useful elsewhere.’ 

‘I assume you do not mean to imply that your husband is not useful.’ 

Spock shifted his shoulders. The muscles in his arms were starting to cramp. 

‘I cannot fault Starfleet Command for their decision to suggest he retire from active service. It was taking a toll on him that he himself would not admit. But they also rejected his expertise at a time when it is needed. For that, I do fault them.’ He exhaled. ‘It appears as if we are destined not to have an ordinary life. Had it not been for my lack of judgement, this would not have happened.’ 

‘Your captivity?’ 

‘Yes.’ 

T’Pring raised an eyebrow. 

‘Explain.’ 

Spock gave up trying to alleviate the strain, and dropped his shoulders. 

‘I took on a protégée – a young Vulcan officer. I was confident that she would excel.’ 

He saw a look of realisation on T’Pring’s face. 

‘Valeris.’ 

‘Yes,’ Spock said. ‘She betrayed the Federation, and her oath to Starfleet, and – though not relevant in the grand scheme of things – me, and the trust I gave her.’

‘She did not commit different betrayals against the Federation and against you,’ T’Pring said. ‘The ideals that she attacked were yours and the Federation’s. The treason was the same.’ 

‘Perhaps,’ he said, though he thought she had a point. ‘One of the men here is related to her. Tavin. I believe he is in charge.’ 

‘They do not have one person in charge.’ 

Spock looked at her in surprise. 

‘You know how their command-structure is organised?’ 

‘I have been here for ten days,’ she said. ‘It is difficult not to observe.’

‘Tell me.’

As before, she dropped her voice. 

‘This is only one of many outposts. Each outpost is led by a group. This group consists of eleven, but I do not know if that is the standard number. They make their decisions unanimously. I heard them claim that it is impossible for them to disagree, as the most logical choice always wins out.’

‘And under them?’ 

‘Are the forces. I believe the eleven in the leading group act as commanders of a company each.’ 

‘This is valuable information, T’Pring,’ Spock said. ‘Thank you.’ 

‘I may be mistaken on certain details.’ 

‘I trust your powers of observations. This is a situation dire enough that potentially flawed data is preferable to none.’ 

She nodded, understanding. Then she asked: 

‘Do you believe we will be able to escape?’ 

‘I am confident of it,’ Spock said. ‘But we must not rush our decision-making. I want to observe first.’ 

T’Pring looked hesitant. 

‘I do not have unlimited time,’ she said. 

‘In what way?’ Spock asked. 

‘I heard them speaking while they let me out. They executed a captive in one of the other outposts. I believe they mentioned it in front of me to make sure I knew that it was a possibility for me. I am not useful to them. They are wasting their resources on me.’

‘They cannot see you as useless. They are feeding you.’ 

‘Perhaps they do it to keep me content.’

‘If they did not, you would be far more docile. Do not give up hope, or we will not get out of here alive. Motivation to stay alive is what will give us the strength to escape.’ 

She snorted, but said: 

‘Logical.’

They were quite for a while. The square of sunlight had vanished now, plunging the dug-out into almost complete darkness. He was uncertain of the time, a disconcerting feeling in itself. It was not yet dusk, but it was approaching. Jim would be waiting. By now, he would know. Had he told anyone? Spock wondered. He hoped – and believed – that he had informed Doctor McCoy of his silence. He also hoped he would keep it from mother, if at all possible. She did not have to know yet. 

‘You wanted to hear about T’Rea.’ 

Spock shook himself. 

‘Yes. I may be able to help – in some way.’

‘No one else has been able to,’ T’Pring said. ‘I doubt you will be successful. Besides, you are not in a position to help anyone.’ 

‘Granted. But tell me nevertheless.’ 

Through the darkness, he saw how she shifted. Even if they were not touching, he could sense that her discomfort was emotional as much as physical. 

‘I frequently feel like T’Pren and T’Rea grew up in different families. When T’Pren was born, I was happy. We were well off, all things considered. I had my husband close. I could dedicate myself to my child. 

‘But with T’Rea… it was different. Stonn was dead. Our financial situation was not as stable as it had been. I had taught myself communication mechanics while I was pregnant. I knew I would need a skill, and it took my mind off Stonn’s deterioration. As soon as I had recovered after the delivery, I sought work. I brought home boxes of broken communication devices and worked while T’Pren watched the baby. When she was at school, I would work while holding T’Rea. I learned to use the tools with both hands, so I could nurse her while I worked.’ She paused for a moment. ‘I have long wondered if I am to blame. Perhaps my grief imprinted on her. Perhaps I was inattentive to her needs.’ 

‘You did it to care for your children,’ Spock said. ‘You clearly tried your hardest to keep them close to you and provide for them. That is not inattentive.’ 

‘Nevertheless, I wonder. It is not logical, but it is how I felt.’ She continued. ‘As T’Rea grew older, nothing seemed wrong. She seemed to be where all my contentment had gone, as if it had taken physical form in her. Still as a toddler, he would smile. T’Pren never did – she was a serious child, always. It is possible that that became part of the problem. She was intent on her studies. She never seemed so to me, but to T’Rea, she seemed distant. Always studying.’ She broke off. ‘You have extensive experience with humans. Do siblings relate differently to one another, when the age-difference is so much smaller? Is it better?’ 

Spock considered it. 

‘I cannot say for certain, as all my data is anecdotal. Jim only had one brother, two years his elder. I never met him, but Jim still speaks of him often. I believe it was a valuable relationship for him, both as a child and as a grown man. It provided companionship, guidance and understanding.’

T’Pring gave something which was almost a sigh. 

‘Perhaps T’Rea would have benefited from a closer sibling.’ 

‘What changed?’ Spock asked. 

‘I do not know,’ T’Pring said, ‘save that she had no social contacts. She was twelve years old, approaching puberty, and I assumed that it was simply the emotionalism some young people fall victim to. I thought it would improve. It only changed shape. She went from having excellent grades to coming close to failing in every subject. Her teachers expressed their concern for her.’ 

‘And her peers?’ 

‘I could not say,’ T’Pring admitted. ‘Perhaps they tormented her. Perhaps she never approached them. I have never learned which.’ 

It took a few minutes before she picked up her story. 

‘I tried to help,’ she said. ‘I tried to speak with her. I offered to meld with her. She refused. I could feel how her control was being tested. Some six times, she lost control and flew into a rage. One such incident – thirteen months ago – was at school. She was suspended. I was ashamed and embarrassed. At that time, I still thought of it simply as a disciplinary matter.’ 

‘But that was not the case later,’ Spock surmised. 

‘No. For much of her suspension, she would not leave her room. She refused to eat. That was when I changed my mind about the nature of the problem, and called in a healer. I thought perhaps she may have contracted some version of what killed Stonn. I do not know much of such things, but I feared that she might have inherited it. But there was nothing to be found. Physically, she was healthy. The healer explained her behaviour as simple teenage petulance.’ 

‘You clearly did not agree,’ Spock said. T’Pring nodded. ‘Did you consider mental illness a possible cause?’ 

‘A probable one,’ T’Pring said. ‘But before I was able to find another healer who would listen to my concerns, her more worrying tendencies appeared gone. She left her bed. She would eat again. She left the house to meet her peers. I was surprised but pleased. She gained more control over her emotions.’ She changed positions, giving herself some time before continuing her narrative. ‘But the control she enforced on herself did not seem to have an end. Every response should be excised. Every emotion should be shunned. She started refusing comforts. She took to sleeping on the floor, as she said she did not need a bed. Once she criticised me for offering her a _pla-savas_ fruit. It served no purpose, she said. It was not logical to consume anything simply for the enjoyment of the taste. It was most out of character. _Pla-savas_ fruit was always her favourite. 

‘It was not just me with whom she argued. T’Pren studies galactic anthropology at Shi’Kahr University. It became a common occurence that T’Rea would tell her sister that she should not waste her time on the study of other peoples. Their arguments would go on for hours. It was during them I noticed that often, the words T’Rea said did not sound like her own. When she was eight years old, she taught herself to play Earth guitar because she enjoyed the sound of it. It did not make sense for her to claim that humans were little more than beasts. It was also the words she used – certain recurring phrases. It was like hearing another’s voice coming out of her mouth. And always, they were arguments – not discussions. She could never be swayed. However well T’Pren defended her studies, T’Rea would not change her mind. Children can be stubborn, but this was not stubbornness.’

‘Did you know of the Kesaya at the time?’ 

Through the dark, Spock could make out how T’Pring shook her head. 

‘No. But I was certain that she was under someone’s influence.’

‘What did you do?’ 

‘I am ashamed to admit it, but I searched her computer when she slept. I had expected to struggle to find evidence, but it was almost all there was. There were comm logs with hundreds of messages between her and people I did not know. Files containing elaborate philosophical arguments on the one hand, and stomach-turning propaganda on the other. Talking-points that I had heard her repeat, almost word for word.’ She exhaled a little more forcefully than was natural. Spock thought he could feel her emotions strain against her controls. 

‘Did you confront her?’ he asked eventually. 

‘Yes. Perhaps it was a mistake. I should have learned more first. But concern for one’s child is not a logical thing.’ Again, she exhaled. ‘In a way, it was a relief to see her lose her temper. She had not reacted emotionally to anything for months. Nevertheless, it was… disturbing.’ She broke off. ‘I will not repeat what she said. I do not wish to remember it.’ 

‘Of course.’ 

They were silent for a long while. Now, the light was completely gone. Spock could only see T’Pring when she moved, but now, she sat stiffly, becoming one with the shadows. 

‘It went on for days,’ she explained. ‘It was the same arguments, again and again. Then one day, her teacher contacted me and said T’Rea had not come to school. I walked the way she always took to school many times – by myself and with T’Pren. I looked through reports of accidents. I feared something had happened. But there was nothing. The next day, I received a hand-written note, sent by courier, from her. It was cryptic, but she made it clear she had gone of her own free will and that I should not come look for her.’

‘Did you believe the note?’ Spock asked. ‘That she was not coerced?’ 

‘Yes. She had threatened to leave before, and she was committed enough to do it. If that commitment stemmed from coercion, I do not know.’ 

‘You reported her missing.’ It was a statement; he had seen the report, but wondered why he had not reacted to the name of the person filing it. 

‘T’Pren did,’ T’Pring explained. ‘I... did not trust myself to appear credible.’ 

Spock wanted to say something to that, but he did not dare, least it provoke her. 

‘I searched for her,’ she said. ‘There was little method in it at first. I would walk around Shi’Kahr, looking for her. I had copied her files – she took her computer with her when she left. When I saw mentions of the Tanit desert, I thought perhaps she had gone here. If she did, I do not know. For all I know, she is in one of the tents. Or perhaps she is somewhere completely different.’

She slumped, her story finished. Spock considered what he had heard. There was one question he had to ask, but that he dreaded. 

‘In her communications with Kesaya members, did T’Rea ever discuss violence?’ 

‘In general, yes, but not specifically. Had there been such a thing, I would have reported it to the police. I was concerned enough for that.’

‘You were captured ten days ago, correct?’

‘Correct.’ She must have noticed his hesitation. ‘Why is this relevant? Speak.’ 

‘We must avoid jumping to conclusions,’ Spock said. ‘There is no evidence of T’Rea’s involvement in these events. But you should know nevertheless. Six days ago, a market in Shi’Kahr was bombed. Two days later, several locations in Katakh were targeted. The Kesaya have taken responsibility for all the attacks.’ 

For all her control, T’Pring was unable to stop the anguished sound that escaped her. It was an animal noise, one of pain and grief so primal that words or complex thought did not play a role. She pushed herself away, back into the corner where she had sat when he had arrived. There, she lay down, facing the wall, becoming indistinguishable with the dark. Spock closed his eyes. Her agonised breaths filled the cell. He did not attempt to close himself off from them. However much telling her this was the right thing to do, he was the reason for this emotional reaction. It was only right that he should suffer for it.

> ***

When Spock woke, he was not aware of having slept. It had been so fitful he was only certain he had fallen asleep because he remembered dreaming. He only remembered fragments of it now. He had been on the _Enterprise_. Valeris had been there – had she been sitting at the desk or standing over him? She had had something in her hand, a knife or perhaps a stylus, capable of being used as a weapon. He had attempted to rewire the door to get out, but it would not work, and when he had tried undoing his work, his hands had tried slow and his fingers clumsy. From the other side of the door, he had heard someone banging his hands against the door, screaming for him to please get out of there.

The door of the dug-out flew open. The bright light welled in, rousing Spock from his thoughts. He did not have time to brace himself before two shapes, silhouetted against the sunlight, burst in and grabbed him. As they dragged him out of the dug-out, the world blurred. His inner eyelids had snapped shut. The captors forced him forwards, not stopping even when he slipped. Finally, they threw him to the ground. Unable to break his fall, Spock landed face-down. There was sand in his mouth. He coughed and spat, trying to get rid of it. He wanted to roll onto his side, but someone put a knee against his back, holding him in place. He froze up, trying to read the situation. If he could find a spot of sand that was dense enough to push his feet against, he should be able to turn and kick the guard. He had not done anything like that for many years, but it may be necessary… 

A gloved hand took hold of the index and long fingers on his right hand. Spock froze.

‘If you do not stay still, I will break them.’ The guard pushed the fingers back a little. The inside of his wrist connected sharply with the handcuff. Spock bit down on his lip to hide the pain. He did not dare respond. It may be taken as an attempt at resistance. A few moments later, the guard let go of his hand and instead undid the cuffs. This time, Spock could not hide his sigh of relief. 

‘The threat still stands,’ the guard stated. Slowly, Spock pushed himself up. 

‘Noted,’ he said. The guard was the same who had spat him in the face the day before. Sitting in a semicircle, facing him, were seven young Vulcans. They all sat in the manner of the disciples at Gol. With an effort, Spock mirrored them. He had not sat in that position for over twenty years, and he was not as flexible as he had been. Nevertheless, the thought he saw one of the youths raise a surprised eyebrow at him. 

None of them spoke for a long while. Spock looked at them each in turn, memorising and recalling. In the middle sat Tavin. Now that he was not quite as concussed as the day before, Spock noticed how the right corner of his mouth drooped. _Undoubtedly neurological damage, most likely self-inflicted._ For a moment he wished Doctor McCoy was there so he could rail against how illogical such a thing was. 

At his right side sat a woman that Spock had not seen before in real life, but had seen pictures of. He recalled the extensive file he had made up on her. T’Shenn – chemist – junior fellow of the Vulcan Science Academy until she handed in her resignation six standard months ago. On his lists of Kesaya devotees, Spock had marked her name, and a few others. If the Kesaya had any intention to use chemical weapons, she would likely be central to the effort. Every defector who had a skill Spock thought could be used for such weapons he had taken special note of. Whenever he came across such a case, he had sought out department heads, supervisors or colleagues. Often, those people were baffled by the scientist’s disappearance. T’Shenn’s case had not been one of them. Her mentor had told Spock that half a year before she left, she had manufactured a small amount of sarin as an experiment. While the toxin was an Earth invention, designed to harm humans, Vulcan neurotransmitters were close enough to human ones that it would have much same effect. When the attacks in Shi’Kahr and Katah had happened, he had reflected that the bombs used seemed far cruder than the things the Kesaya were capable of. 

Beside her was another woman, as young as T’Shenn. He did not recognise her face, but the stain on her leg-wraps looked like machine oil. Perhaps she was in charge of vehicles or some other machinery. Both she and T’Shenn had their hair cut like the woman who had taken Spock to the dug-out the day before, identical to the men. It was not the idea of women with short hair that unsettled him. It was the fact that all seven people sitting in front of him had the same clothes and the same haircuts. If uniformity could disturb an officer, it was certainly going to far. 

On the far end sat a man Spock recognised both from his files and from the newsfeed. He was not surprised to see him here. Rekan had been a promising pentathlete, and had won several medals at the Federation Games. At the time there had been reports of strange financial dealings which Spock had not paid any attention to. Such gossip did not interest him. He had remembered it, however, and it had become a key piece of evidence when he realised that Rekan had sympathies with the Kesaya. When Rekan had dropped out of public view a few months ago, Spock had suspected that he had gone from a financier of the group to an active member. It seemed he was right. 

On Tavin’s left sat a man that Spock did not recognise, and he could not surmise anything about his occupation or responsibilities by his looks or attire. The woman beside him looked familiar, but he could not remember her name. He thought she might have been among the graduate students from Shi’Kahr Polytechnic that he suspected that joined the Kesaya, but he could not be sure. 

The man on the far left was a surprise. Spock had to look twice to be certain. He knew him, but not from his work on the Kesaya. If he remembered correctly, his name was Nirak. They had only spoken a handful of times, but he had been a constant presence at Gol. He had undergone kolinahr at a relatively young age and was serving as a priest during Spock’s discipleship. He was not the kind of person Spock had expected would be led astray by the Kesaya, but perhaps their logical arguments had swayed him. 

Spock’s attention was pulled back to Tavin when he spoke. 

‘I hope you have appreciated our hospitality.’ 

‘Sarcasm is not logical,’ said Spock, ‘and what you have extended to me is not hospitality.’ 

Tavin did not heed the first comment. 

‘In comparison, it is.’

‘Do you propose to torture me?’

‘Should it become necessary,’ Tavin said. 

‘In what way necessary?’ 

‘If you are uncooperative.’ 

‘You must be aware that it has been proven many times over that torture is an inefficient means to gain information.’

‘That is assuming that we would use it to extract information,’ Tavin said. ‘There are other reasons to inflict pain.’ 

‘Punishment,’ Spock said. 

‘That is one.’ 

‘There are others?’ 

Tavin did not respond, but instead seemed to wait for him to draw his conclusions. Spock remembered what their attackers had done to T’Son. 

‘Intimidation.’ 

‘Correct.’ 

‘Of whom?’ 

Spock thought that had he been able to, Tavin would have smiled. 

‘There are many who would be moved by your suffering.’ 

It took all his control not to let his horror show on his face. He thought of Jim, his mother, McCoy. 

‘May I ask you a question, Tavin?’ he said. 

‘You may.’ 

He straightened his back and grounded himself, pushing away his fear and taking hold of his anger instead. 

‘Were you among those who murdered Satak?’ 

Tavin did not look surprised, but several of the others exchanged glances. 

‘You would waste a question on that?’

‘It is not wasted,’ Spock said. ‘I have seen the recordings. I wish to know. Did you participate in the torture and killing of your brother-in-arms for the sake of propaganda?’ 

At the compound noun he used, Rekan spat on the ground. 

‘Satak volunteered,’ Tavin said. 

‘How is self-destruction logical?’ asked Spock.

‘It served a higher purpose.’

‘What purpose? The advance of your twisted version of logic?’ 

If there had been some command from Tavin or one of the others, Spock did not see it, so he was quite unprepared when the guard kicked him in the side. He fell forward hard. No one spoke as he lay winded, trying to catch his breath. When he sat up again, the well-controlled faces before him looked undeniably hostile. 

‘Fear may seem a useful tool, but it does not breed submission,’ Spock said. ‘Distributing gore will only strengthen the opposition and tarnish any rose-tinted vision you sell your recruits. Eventually, the shock will wear off, and you would feel forced to execute another of your followers. Is that logical?’ 

None of them answered. Their eyes spoke volumes. 

It was Rekan who broke the silence.

‘To the matter at hand.’ 

‘Yes,’ T’Shenn agreed. 

‘You may be correct about the existence of fossil deposits in the foothills, but we do not believe you ventured out here to study them,’ said the man whose name Spock did not know. 

‘Your record is no secret to us, Spock,’ the mechanic said. ‘You have been implicated in espionage before.’ 

‘We wish to know what you know,’ Tavin said. 

Spock shook his head. 

‘There is nothing I know.’ 

Rekan’s nostrils flared with annoyance. He looked at the women beside him, who looked at each other and then at Tavin. Tavin exchanged glances with the two Vulcans on his other side, and then looked at Nirak.

‘Nirak.’ 

The priest shook his head. 

‘No.’ 

The others looked at each other in surprise. 

‘Why?’ Rekan demanded. 

‘I will not touch his mind,’ Nirak said. ‘My thoughts are pure. His are not. I will not tarnish my mind with his.’

‘He is our enemy,’ T’Shenn said. ‘We need information of what operations may have been compromised.’ 

‘Nevertheless, I refuse,’ Nirak said. ‘I will not meld with him.’ 

‘This is your duty,’ Tavin told him. ‘Egotism has no place here.’ 

‘It is not egotism,’ Nirak said. ‘It is self-preservation, and self-preservation is logical. If I was asked to walk into the line of fire, I would refuse.’ 

‘Satak did not refuse,’ T’Shenn pointed out. ‘He embraced his duty.’ 

‘His duty is not mine. I will not do it.’ 

T’Shenn gave a deep sigh and stood up. 

‘Then I will.’  
She took off her gloves and stuffed them into her belt. Flexing her fingers, she approached Spock. The guard, still standing behind him, took him by the shoulders. Spock did not fight. He knew that it would only make the meld more painful. Their argument had given him time to prepare himself too. Part of him marvelled that they had given him almost half a minute’s forewarning. If Nirak were not a disciple of the kolinahr, Spock would have wondered if he was buying him time. It had been enough for him to secret away what he did not want them to see. While listening to their back and forth, he had pulled his conversation with T’Pring about their escape into the deepest recesses in his mind. Then he had hidden his work on the Kesaya, trapping it behind his psychic shields. As T’Shenn stepped closer, reaching out to him, he took hold of the thought of Jim and erected walls around it. That was too sacred to show. 

T’Shenn’s fingers found the meld-points on his face. With a sickening rush, he felt her push into his mind. 

They were not one. This was an attack. Still, he could feel her thoughts as she started searching through his mind, flicking through his memories with no regard for the pain she was causing. He needed to put up some resistance, something to distract her. When he had been a child, Sarek had suggested running through equations as a way of throwing off a psychic attack, but he doubted that would work with T’Shenn. She was a scientist. It would not distract her. Instead, he chose something else, something in a language she may not know and that would confuse her if she did.

> _Nam Sibyllam quidem Cumis ego ipse oculis meis uidi in ampulla pendere, et cum illi pueri dicerent, Σίβυλλα τί θέλεις;_
>
>> He felt her confusion.
>>
>>> _respondebat illa: ἀποθανείν θέλω._
>>>
>>>> Her mind recoiled a little.
>>>>
>>>>> _Winter kept us warm, covering_  
>  Earth in forgetful snow, feeding  
>  A little life with dried tubers.
>>>>>
>>>>>> She pushed again, harder but with less finesse.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> _What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow_  
>  Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,  
>  You cannot say, or guess for you know only  
>  A heap of broke images, where the sun beats
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> The pressure abated. Somewhere in her mind, Spock sensed how she tried to make sense of the words.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> _Madame Sosotris, famous clairvoyante,  
>  Had a bad cold, nevertheless  
>  Is known to be the wisest woman in Europe,  
>  With a wicked pack of cards. Here, said she,  
>  Is your card, the drowned Phoenician Sailor,  
>  (There are pearls that were his eyes. Look!)_
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>> She struggled against the barrier the verse had become, trying to find a way deeper into his mind.
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>> _You who were with me in the ships at Mylae!  
>  That corpse you planted last year in your garden,  
>  Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year?_
>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>> Her thoughts pounded against his mind. _Dead bodies do not sprout. It makes no sense._
>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>>> _You! hypocrite lecteur! – mon semblable, – mon frère!_
> 
> In the physical world, he felt her fingers tense and her nails dig into his skin. In his mind, he felt how she had stopped pushing. She was still inside his thoughts, but she had lost her momentum. It was easy to push back at her. She tried to hold him off, but her mental shields were not in place. Her mind lay open.
> 
> A haemorrhage of emotions poured from her. Spock felt her conviction and her anguish, her fear and her passion. She believed in what she did, but was afraid that her love for the philosophy would be seen as weakness. She did not want to bring harm to anyone, but they said it was necessary, that after these last acts of violence, they would all be free. She resented her family and her friends for not allowing themselves to be convinced, and she feared for them because she knew what might happen to them. 
> 
> Then an image crystallised between them. She must have been trying to shield it, but instead she had brought it to the forefront of her mind. Spock saw through her eyes and through her safety mask as she watched the liquid falling from the pipette in her grip, drop by drop. _One small mistake and I’m dead. No mistakes, and thousands die. But it is necessary. I must do this._
> 
>  _You do not,_ Spock answered. _You have a choice._
> 
> The mental contact broke. T’Shenn screamed and tore her fingers from his face. Spock felt like he had run for hours, but at least he could still sit. T’Shenn fell to the ground and dry-heaved. Her comrades stared in surprise and – if Spock was not mistaken – horror. 
> 
> ‘How…?’ T’Shenn gasped. ‘He’s a half-breed – how can he be so strong?’ 
> 
> Tavin stood. The others followed suit. Two of them hurried over to T’Shenn and helped her up. Tavin turned to the guard. 
> 
> ‘Shackle him and lock him up. There is no need to treat him gently.’ 
> 
> Spock tried to put up no resistance whatsoever, to give the guard as little incentive to hurt him as possible, but it did not dissuade him. The shackling was rough enough. He led him not by the arm but by the neck. Once they drew closer to the dug-out, he pushed him to the ground. 
> 
> There was nothing finessed about the beating. After the first blow, Spock reflected that this routine of interrogation, detainment and physical abuse was rather tedious. Then he wondered if the concussion may be worse than he thought. That kind of thing would not generally be described as tedious. There was nothing he could do to protect himself, so he let the blows fall, trying only to avoid biting his tongue. Finally it was over. The guard got up and, shaking his sleeve back, wiped the blood off his knuckles. Spock caught a momentary glimpse of his skin, bearing a pattern of bruises. Perhaps he saw him watching, because he directed a kick against his ribs. 
> 
> ‘Get up.’ 
> 
> Slowly, Spock rose. The guard did not give him time to recover from the dizziness that threatened to overcome him. He directed him into the direction of the dug-out, and, unlocking the door, pushed him inside. Spock tried to turn so he would not hit his face, but his cheek connected with the ground along with the rest of his body. Even as he fell, he heard a gasp of surprise. Forcing his eyes open, he saw T’Pring watching him, looking alarmed. She opened her mouth to speak. He minutely shook his head. Her mouth closed. 
> 
> ‘You,’ said the guard. ‘Come on.’ 
> 
> He pulled her to her feet. T’Pring looked away resolutely from the other prisoner and followed him. The door slammed shut, shutting out the sun. 
> 
> For a long time, Spock did not move. His face and his side pounded. When he felt his teeth with his tongue, he found another two broken. When he pushed at one of his incisors, it started bleeding. He had already had the taste of blood in his mouth. Judging by the way his lower lip stung, the guard’s blows had ruptured it. Now, the blood made him feel sick. He spat it out. Was the gloom playing tricks on his eyes, or was that an alarming amount for a loose tooth? He could not tell. He sank back onto his side, trying as best he could not to let the broken skin rest against the ground. 
> 
> His mind wandered. He wondered what Jim was doing. He must have followed the protocol he had left him. Should he have told him that the Federation would not send out a rescue party? Both they and Spock himself had thought it would be too risky. Instead they would go through diplomatic channels to put pressure on the Vulcan government. They had the right to govern their own planet, but when a Federation official met with foul play on their territory, they would be fools not to respond somehow. 
> 
> But it would be through diplomacy, covert intelligence collection. No one was coming for him. Nevertheless, he had told T’Pring they would escape. Was that foolish? Almost at once, he answered his own question: not at all. He would rather starve to death in the wilds of the Tanit desert than have his demise be made a spectacle that the Kesaya would use to torment those he loved. 
> 
> But he did not want to die. If there was a chance, however slim, that he could make it back, he would try. He felt a sudden pang of longing for home, surprisingly not San Francisco, but the d’Hriset estate. As he grew up, it had often felt empty. When it was no longer acceptable for him to run through the halls and play with I’Chaya, the mansion and its silence had expanded around him. By contrast, the estate had seemed so alive during this stay. Jim’s presence cast a golden light through the same rooms that had been so lonely during his tormented adolescent years. Whenever Jim walked into a room, it seemed transformed. Setting aside all what duty was, Spock now regretted every minute he had spent in his study on his own. He remembered how one day, a week or so into their stay, he had wandered through the house to clear his mind after several hours of reading. He had paused in the large hall at the windows. On the other side of the rose garden, he spotted Jim, asleep in his chair. His glasses had slid down his nose and his book was slipping out of his grip. Moving carefully so as not the wake him, Spock’s mother had been unfolding a parasol to give him some shade. She had taken the book from his limp hands and picked the glasses from his nose. Spock turned away and returned to his study, full of love for Jim and mother, and equally full of resentment that he was not the one there to do those things for him. 
> 
> The sense of loss changed character. It took him a moment to identify it. He wished – illogically – to be a small child, young enough that closeness was acceptable, small enough to fit in his mother’s arms. If he were to die here, at the hands of the Kesaya, at least he would know that he had kissed her goodbye. But he had not embraced her – he did not know if he had ever done so since being young, when his arms struggled to reach around her neck. It may not be a Vulcan custom, but it was a human one, and he had always sensed a feeling of physical loss in his mother. Vulcan children had no great need for touch, except for telepathy. Why had they assumed that that had been true of him, or of his mother? When he had just been born, the scientists at the Science Academy had often discounted her need to hold her child. They had thought it may harm him – she was not a telepath, and her skin was too cold. They had preferred instead that Sarek held him. There were no photographs of it, but the image, picked up from one of his parents, was clear in his mind. It was like he had been there, looking down at himself, a frail little creature, small enough that Sarek could support his entire body with his two hands. In the meantime, his mother had ached for the opportunity to hold him. 
> 
> Spock may be a touch-telepath, but his need for tactile contact was also human. It had taken a long time to come to terms with that it had nothing to do with psychic connections or sexual stimuli, but the simple human need for touch. Even if he now knew of that aspect of himself, he had not fully reconciled himself to it. Jim was one thing – he had never been shy to touch Spock, even when they were merely captain and first officer. His mother was something quite different. She had been told time and time again by her husband, by the Vulcan doctors, even by her own son, that her urge to hug him was wrong.
> 
>  _If I survive this, I will embrace my mother,_ Spock promised himself. 
> 
> The blood on his lip had started to dry by the time the door unlocked and T’Pring was pushed back into the cell. As soon as the door slammed shut behind her, she knelt by his side. 
> 
> ‘Spock, are you unharmed?’ 
> 
> ‘Not entirely,’ he answered. ‘I dread to think of the amount of dental work I will require once we escape.’
> 
> ‘If you are capable of frivolities, I can only assume you are not badly injured.’  
>  With some difficulty, Spock sat up. 
> 
> ‘No, not badly injured. I believe I have antagonised our captors.’ 
> 
> ‘Now you are stating the obvious.’ 
> 
> ‘Possible,’ he said. ‘Please put it down to a likely concussion. We should start preparing for our escape.’
> 
> T’Pring nodded. 
> 
> ‘I surmised that. I do not know what you have in mind, but I thought you may need tools.’ She moved so her legs were stretched in front of her. ‘There are a number of pins in my leg-wraps.’ 
> 
> Spock raised his eyebrows, impressed that she had anticipated him. 
> 
> ‘May I?’  
>  She nodded. Turning so he sat at ninety degrees’ angle from her, Spock started feeling for the pins with his bound hands. T’Pring was looking over at the door. 
> 
> ‘Is there something on your mind?’ he asked, just as he found the head of the first pin. Carefully so as not to scrape her with it, he pulled it out. 
> 
> ‘The guard,’ T’Pring answered. ‘Did you notice?’ 
> 
> ‘What?’ Spock asked, searching for the second pin.  
>  ‘The way he smells.’  
>  ‘I did not register anything.’ 
> 
> T’Pring glanced towards the door again.
> 
> ‘Perhaps I am mistaken.’ 
> 
> ‘Or perhaps not,’ Spock said. ‘What did you smell?’ 
> 
> She frowned and wet her lips, as if her parched lips were distracting her from thinking of the smell.
> 
> ‘It… No.’ She shook her head. ‘My only association is absurd and inappropriate.’ 
> 
> ‘What is it?’ 
> 
> T’Pring exhaled sharply, then said, quickly but still measuredly: 
> 
> ‘He smells of sex.’ 
> 
> Now Spock was the one to glance over at the door. 
> 
> ‘I think that is exactly what he smells of,’ he said. ‘I cannot pick up the pheromones myself, but you can.’ He recalled the disproportionate rage he had seen in him. ‘Did you see his eyes?’ 
> 
> T’Pring thought for a moment. Then realisation struck her. 
> 
> ‘How did I not see that at once?’ 
> 
> ‘Neither did I,’ Spock said. ‘But it makes sense of a detail I noticed – some bruises on his arm.’ 
> 
> ‘Why is that relevant?’ 
> 
> ‘The Kesaya values logic over everything. Any slip is a huge shame, far more than in ordinary society. What would it do to a member of their cause to go through pon farr?’ 
> 
> ‘Continue,’ T’Pring said, clearly not interested in answering hypotheticals. 
> 
> ‘Those bruises were from a hypospray – quite liberally applied. He’s dosing himself with something.’ 
> 
> ‘To hide his condition? Or to delay it?’ 
> 
> ‘Perhaps even to attempt to avert it.’
> 
> ‘Is that possible?’ 
> 
> ‘There are substances that have been used for that purpose. Most are illegal, all are unsafe.’ 
> 
> ‘Might this play to our advantage?’ 
> 
> ‘Undoubtedly,’ Spock said. ‘He is likely having difficulty focusing, suffering from memory lapses, irrational emotions – and that is not taking into account any side-effects of the substance he is administering, which are likely considerable.’ 
> 
> ‘So what do we do?’ T’Pring asked. Spock pulled the third and final pin out of her her leg-wraps. ‘We cannot sit and hope that he will neglect to lock the door.’ 
> 
> ‘No. I am confident I will be able to unlock the door,’ Spock said. ‘I have been studying the lock. It is not a particularly complex design.’ 
> 
> ‘And the hand-cuffs?’ 
> 
> ‘I will not be able to pick my own,’ he admitted. ‘I will release you, and then I will instruct you in what to do.’ 
> 
> ‘I have no experience in picking locks,’ T’Pring observed. 
> 
> ‘These shackles have mechanisms in them. You can tell by the weight. You said you were a trained mechanic. You will find the task simple.’ 
> 
> ‘Very well,’ she said. ‘Shall we start at once? I expect it may be time-consuming.’ 
> 
> ‘Yes. Let me look at your handcuffs.’ 
> 
> She turned around until she faced away from him. He studied the handcuffs closely. 
> 
> ‘I know this model,’ he said. ‘They are of a commercial type.’ While he spoke, he started manipulating the pin. It was strong and thin with a small metal head. It would make a good tool, but the metal was difficult to bend. Several times, he pricked himself with it as he tried to shape the end into a hook. At least once, it drew blood when it caught on a cuticle. Eventually, he decided it would have to do. He turned to sit back to back with T’Pring. 
> 
> ‘I apologise if I come in contact with your hands,’ he said, transferring the pin into a better grip and fumbling for her handcuffs with the other. ‘I will endeavour to keep physical contact to a minimum.’
> 
> ‘That is appreciated.’ 
> 
> Almost immediately, his fingers grazed against hers. He felt a flash of her emotions. 
> 
> ‘Apologies.’ He paused for a moment to clear his head. Then he got hold of the handcuffs. Closing his eyes, he started working. The tool he had fashioned from one of the pins was crude, but after a few tries, he managed to get hold of one of the screws in the cuff. When he tried to turn it, the pin slipped out several times, but then caught on the inside of the screw and allowed itself to be turned. Releasing the first screw took over twenty minutes. He could not be more precise. His sense of time felt clouded. Already, his fingers felt sore, and the tool was losing its shape. He paused only long enough to have a drink of water and reshape the pin. Then he set to work again. 
> 
> When the second screw was undone, he started prying open the shell of the handcuff. Sitting this close, he could sense T’Pring’s unease. She was uncomfortable sitting this still, with her hands so close to his. He projected a telepathic apology and continued his work. The mechanism was laid bare now. He could feel the details under the tips of his fingers. When he moved the pin again, he felt a slight tremble in his hand from the effort. At once, the fatigue overwhelmed him. 
> 
> ‘T’Pring?’ 
> 
> ‘Yes?’
> 
> ‘I am losing my concentration.’ 
> 
> ‘Shall we delay?’ she asked. Spock shook his head. 
> 
> ‘No. We cannot risk them seeing this. We continue until it is done.’ 
> 
> ‘When what can we do?’ 
> 
> ‘Speak to me,’ he said. ‘It will take the pressure off the task.’ 
> 
> ‘Very well.’ She sounded like she was somewhat at a loss. He had just found the mechanism in the cuffs with his fingers when she said: ‘Tell me about Earth.’ 
> 
> ‘What of Earth?’ he asked. Guiding the pin into the right place, he found the circuit he was looking for. 
> 
> ‘I have never been there. You have spent much of your life there.’ 
> 
> ‘I lived on Earth for some years as a young man, and it has been my primary residence since my promotion to captain, but that does not constitute much of my life.’ 
> 
> ‘What is it like?’ 
> 
> Spock thought about it. In the meantime, he found the next point in the circuit. 
> 
> ‘It is a diverse planet, far more meteorologically heterogenous than Vulcan, but my overriding impression is the water. From our apartment, you can see the bay. Sometimes, there is the smell of the sea. It is nothing like what we call seas. The oceans of Earth are vast. I am not ashamed to admit that they awaken some form of primal fear in me.’
> 
> ‘Then why did you chose to live within sight of it?’ T’Pring asked. Spock located the third circuit and with a twisting motion, cut it off. 
> 
> ‘The bay is not like the ocean,’ he said. ‘It lacks the untamed, unpredictable aspect of the ocean. Instead, it is beautiful.’ 
> 
> ‘Is it home?’ 
> 
> Spock stopped for a moment. He was not sure. San Francisco did not feel like home, but neither did the mansion outside Shi’Kahr. He did not even consider the _Enterprise_ – the ship he had served on for so many years, or her younger namesake – his home. Instead, it was the image of Jim that came to mind. Carefully, he brushed the back of his finger against T’Pring’s. She twitched, surprised at the contact, but then she said:
> 
> ‘I understand.’ 
> 
> He felt her responding thought, and saw the small flat where she had raised her daughters. Once T’Rea had run away, it no longer felt like home. She could only imagine how T’Pren felt, left alone with no mother and no sister. The details may be different, but the longing was the same. 
> 
> Spock pushed at the fourth circuit. With one decisive move, he severed the connection. The handcuffs snapped open. 
> 
> With a dull thud, they fell to the floor. T’Pring exhaled loudly, moving her arms and rolling her shoulders. 
> 
> ‘Thank you,’ she said finally. She turned and looked at the handcuffs where they lay. ‘These would make a passable weapon.’ 
> 
> ‘I believe you are correct,’ Spock said. He moved over to the bowl of water, and was about to lean down to drink. 
> 
> ‘Wait.’ T’Pring picked up the bowl and held it up to his mouth. Carefully, she tipped it so let him drink out of it.  
>  ‘Thank you.’
> 
> She put down the bowl. 
> 
> ‘You do not look well,’ she said. ‘I should have secreted some food with me when they fed me.’ 
> 
> Spock shook his head. 
> 
> ‘It would not be worth the risk. Any indication of cooperation may alert them of our plans.’
> 
> ‘Nevertheless.’ She picked up the bowl again. ‘Drink.’ 
> 
> He drank. In his eagerness, the water dripped down his chin, washing some of the blood off. It stung in his wounds, but the sensation of pouring water was welcome. When he had drunk his share, T’Pring had the last of the water. Although she had not been beaten, her lips were cracked with dehydration. With some effort, Spock got to his feet and went over to the door to look at the lock again. It would be easy work. That was fortunate, as he thought they should wait until it was dark. He looked over to the square of light from the high window. It must already be the afternoon. How long had it taken him to release T’Pring? He had no idea. His sense of time, usually so accurate, was telling him nothing. _Like a compass at the magnetic pole,_ as Jim would say. It made him feel out of control, a feeling he hated. 
> 
> ‘Spock,’ T’Pring said. He turned around when he heard a sound – a key being pushed into the lock. 
> 
> ‘Get into the corner,’ he hissed. ‘Put your hands behind your back.’ He almost threw himself to the ground, securing the open handcuffs with one foot and pushing them under his leg. T’Pring had just put her hands so it looked like she was still shackled when the door opened. The sudden light stung Spock’s eyes, making him blink. The guard stepped inside, unstoppered the flask he was carrying and refilled their water bowl. Spock noticed that he was dragging one of his legs in a way he had not a few hours ago. Perhaps the substances he was taking was affecting him already. He had expected some form of attention – a stray kick or slur at least – but instead the guard turned to T’Pring and made a lewd gesture before leaving.
> 
> When the door slammed shut, T’Pring let out the breath she had been holding. She did not attempt to hide her anger. Spock felt the illogical need to apologise for the guard’s actions, even if he had no control over them. He shared her anger, feeling a protectiveness which he realised had nothing to do with the bond they had once shared. It was what he would feel for a fellow officer – not quite friendship, but deep respect. 
> 
> ‘Spock.’ 
> 
> He looked over at T’Pring. Her expression was so grave he thought for a moment that she had somehow picked up his thoughts and disapproved. 
> 
> ‘There is a problem with our plan,’ she said. 
> 
> Spock frowned. 
> 
> ‘In what way?’ 
> 
> She moved closer, making sure the guard would not hear them. 
> 
> ‘Your handcuffs are not the same as mine.’ 
> 
> ‘Are you quite sure?’ 
> 
> ‘I was thinking about the task when you were inspecting the lock,’ she explained. ‘I was paying attention. They look very different from mine.’ 
> 
> Spock drew a deep, measured breath. 
> 
> ‘Show me.’ 
> 
> She reached out and placed her fingers against his face. In his mind, he saw through her eyes: himself at the door, hands shackled behind his back. The handcuffs looked like they were made from a different metal, the setting of the screws was not the same, and the body of the shackles looked heavier. She broke the contact gently, but he still felt shaken by the realisations that was coming over him. Now, when he twisted his wrists, he could tell that the design was not the same as those on the ground. 
> 
> ‘I do not know how to pick these.’ 
> 
> It came out sounding blunt, almost unimportant. Nevertheless, he felt himself reeling. 
> 
> ‘Can you not figure it out?’ she asked. Spock shook his head. 
> 
> ‘No. I have no idea what the mechanism is. Yours were standard, commercial hand-cuffs, of the type used by security companies. These…’ He made a small gesture with his arms. ‘They are all-together different. They may have designed them themselves.’ 
> 
> T’Pring’s jaw muscles tightened a little. 
> 
> ‘Could we simply break them?’ 
> 
> ‘I doubt it,’ he said. ‘Not without risking serious injury.’ He did not want to consider what might happen if a sharp piece of metal was forced against his radial artery. 
> 
> Spock closed his eyes, trying to think through the problem. During his training, he had been taught how to do a roll and move his cuffed hands to the front of his body as his back curved, but it was not an option. The cell was too small, and the sound of his body hitting the ground may attract attention. Even without those factors, he was not certain he could do that trick any longer. The last time had had to do it, he had been in his mid-forties, and it had not been as easy as when he had been taught it as an eighteen-year-old. He could ask T’Pring to try to dismantle the cuffs, even if he did not know what would be necessary, but that was not safe. For all he knew, the engineers had booby-trapped the mechanism. Besides, it would take time, time they did not have. If they were still here in the morning, the Kesaya would find out about their attempted escape, and they would punish them for it. 
> 
> ‘Yes,’ he said to himself. ‘It seems the only way.’ 
> 
> ‘What?’ T’Pring asked. Spock looked her in the eye. 
> 
> ‘I need you to dislocate my shoulder.’ 
> 
> She looked incredulous. 
> 
> ‘Did you not say just we should avoid risking injury?’ 
> 
> ‘I cannot think of another solution,’ Spock said. ‘We do not have time for blind guesses. However, if you dislocate my shoulder, it will be possible to move my arms over my head. My right arm has been straining against the socket for most of the day. All it needs is a decisive push. My left, however, requires a more blunt treatment.’ 
> 
> ‘You forget, I have no combat training,’ T’Pring said. ‘I do not know how to dislocate bones.’ 
> 
> ‘All it takes is enough force.’ 
> 
> ‘I will harm you,’ she said. ‘And you will still be shackled. How will we escape then?’ 
> 
> ‘I can unlock that door with one hand,’ Spock said, ‘and I can fight with my hands restrained. I can do neither of those things with my hands behind my back.’ 
> 
> T’Pring wrinkled her nose in disapproval. 
> 
> ‘There is no other way?’ 
> 
> ‘No,’ Spock said. 
> 
> ‘Very well, then. When?’ 
> 
> He considered it, weighing his options. 
> 
> ‘I would estimate there is only two hours of sunlight left. We should time our escape to nightfall, before the cold sets in. That will give us as much time as possible to get away from the camp.’ 
> 
> ‘So?’ 
> 
> ‘We do it now,’ he said, standing up. ‘That will give me some time to recover my strength.’ 
> 
> T’Pring stood up and stepped closer. 
> 
> ‘Instruct me. Which arm first?’ 
> 
> ‘The left will probably suffice. I believe forcing it over my head will be enough to dislocate my other shoulder.’
> 
> ‘You make it sound like you are basing this on guesswork.’ 
> 
> ‘It is necessary,’ he said. ‘I have never instructed anyone in how to do this to someone with their hands secured behind their back, least of all not to myself.’ 
> 
> T’Pring raised an eyebrow, prompting him to explain. 
> 
> ‘Stand at my left side, facing the opposite direction.’ She moved. ‘Would you prefer me to explain it to you, or walk you through the motions?’ 
> 
> ‘Verbal instructions will suffice.’ 
> 
> ‘Very well,’ Spock said. He got the sense that she too was rather embarrassed about the physical closeness all this required of them. ‘I will lean forward and raise my arm. You will take my forearm with your right hand, and my elbow with your left. Bring my arm straight by pushing with your left hand. Then pull with your right, further than you think is necessary. If possible, avoid breaking my nose with your knee, although I would recommend it in other more conventional situations for self-defence. Then grab both my arms and force them over my head.’ 
> 
> She nodded. 
> 
> ‘Understood.’ Still she did not move. ‘Will it not hurt?’ 
> 
> ‘It will.’ 
> 
> ‘Will you be able to control the pain?’ 
> 
> ‘Uncertain,’ Spock admitted. 
> 
> ‘So you may cry out?’ 
> 
> ‘It is a possibility.’ 
> 
> She exhaled, thinking. 
> 
> ‘That might alert the guard, or someone else who is more coherent.’
> 
> ‘True,’ Spock said. ‘If they had not taken my belt, I could have bit down on it. I do not see why they took it off me. I have no clue how one would manage to hang oneself when shackled.’ He broke off. T’Pring had started unpinning her scarf. ‘That is not necessary.’ 
> 
> ‘It is the logical choice,’ she said. ‘It is easily available and relatively clean.’ She unwrapped it. Under it, her hair was in a braid. Standing this close, Spock spotted a few grey hairs. ‘I can simply put it back on when this is over.’ 
> 
> ‘After I have bitten down on it?’ 
> 
> She shot him a look. 
> 
> ‘I am a mother of two. I am not squeamish.’ She twisted the scarf several times. 
> 
> ‘In that case, let us proceed.’ 
> 
> She held up the scarf and let him bite into it. The fabric felt odd in his mouth, sending an uncomfortable tingling through his teeth. A few grains of sands had lodged into the fabric and now stuck to his tongue. As he leaned forward and stretched out his arms, the uncomfortable sensation of the cloth in his mouth was taking up his mind. T’Pring took hold of his arm. Her grip was steady, but when she straightened out his arm, it was not with enough force. Perhaps this would not work, he thought. 
> 
> The pressure changed. Suddenly his arm was forced straight and wrenched forward, sending pain coursing through his body, not stopping when he felt it should. For a few seconds more, he clung to the sensation of choking on the cloth in his mouth. Then it was all gone.


	5. Part V

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, apologies for the slow posting - I got caught up in a big bang. But here are!

Jim woke as the first rays of sunlight made their way into the cave. Besides him, McCoy was still asleep. On occasion he would snort or murmur something unintelligible. Jim unzipped his sleeping-bag and moved away as quietly as he could. Taking the notebook he had retrieved from the wrecked landspeeder with him, he made his way out of the cave. In the morning light, the stone around him seemed to shine. He sat down on a ledge close to the opening, angling his head so he would not get the sun in his eyes. 

When he opened Spock’s diary, a thin stream of sand fell from between the pages. The grains snuck into the folds of his breeches and ran down the stone before getting lost among its myriad cousins which the wind had swept in between the rocks. Jim held the book at arm’s length – he had worried that he would break his glasses if he brought them with him, and he had not thought he would have to do any reading. Spock had only written some five pages, all of it in English, meant for the Federation. Quickly, Jim realised that there were no clues to be found here. Whatever had happened at that crash-site had been so sudden Spock had not known about it beforehand. Nevertheless, Jim read every word. The sight of Spock’s handwriting, so neat and elegant that it reminded Jim of old European handwriting from before mechanical typing, was at once comforting and nerve-wrecking. 

He did not bother to close the diary, but sat with it open in his lap as he looked out over the desert. Inevitably, he thought back to last night. He had felt things through the bond before, but never like that. The only comparison he could think of had been during an away-mission during his second command. He had beamed down with a small landing-party on what had been logged in the computer as an uninhabited M planet. Within a minute of arriving, they had been attacked by some fifty spear-wielding amphibians. The security officer had tried to fight them off with her bare hands, Scotty had been knocked out and Jim had taken a spear to the thigh. He recalled clutching at his wound and watching how one of the blue-scaled aliens had knocked the communicator out of Chekov’s hand. The thought _we’re all going to die here_ had gone through his mind. Only moments later, a fully armed security detail had materialised, fought off the attackers and got them all back to the ship. He did not remember anything until waking up in sickbay and seeing Spock limping over to his bedside. As it turned out, it had been the psychic connection between them that had saved the landing-party. Spock had felt the spear cutting into Jim’s leg as if it were his own, and had ordered down the second party. 

Jim had always thought that it was only Spock who could feel such things, being the telepath, but apparently that was not the case. What worried him more than anything was the intensity of the sensation yesterday. Even the bad wound he had sustained on that away-mission had not knocked Spock unconscious by proxy. Whatever had happened last night had made him black out. Perhaps it had nothing to do with the severity of the injury, but their proximity to one another, he mused. Spock was likely closer to him now than he had been that day he had been planet-side. But what if that was not it?

He sighed and leaned against the rock. Overhead, he heard the screech of a bird. Its shadow passed over him. It set off over the desert, its feathers radiant in the sun. Any other day, he would have found such a thing beautiful, but not with all this on his mind – not when he knew that that was a carrion bird. Unwillingly, he thought of the bodies they had left by the wreckage of the landspeeder. For all he knew, that was where the bird was headed. 

The sound of footsteps brought him out of his thoughts. 

‘There you are,’ McCoy said and sat down beside him. ‘Did you get any sleep?’ 

‘Eventually,’ Jim said. They had been awake longer than either of them had meant to, both unable to settle down after all that had happened that day. ‘You?’ 

‘I’ll get by.’  
They sat in silence for a moment. Then McCoy gestured at the notebook. 

‘Have you learned anything?’ 

‘No,’ Jim said, closing it. ‘It might be useful to the diplomats, but it doesn’t give any clues.’ 

McCoy sighed. 

‘Jim, I’m sorry,’ he said, looking straight at him now. ‘So what now?’ 

‘I want to continue to the barchans.’ 

Bones frowned. Jim thought he could see the tug-of-war in him. The sensible thing to do would be to turn back and inform the authorities what had happened to Spock and his two travelling-companions. On the other hand, that would be accepting that there was nothing they could do. It would be leaving him here. If they pressed on to the sand-dunes, where he had spoken of going, at least it would give them some closure. 

‘How far away are we?’ McCoy asked. 

‘We should be able to get there by midday.’ 

He got to his feet. 

‘In that case, we should have breakfast and get going.’ 

They got ready without talking much. Despite himself, Jim felt reluctant to leave the shrine. Perhaps it was because of the art and the writing, showing that people had been here before. For centuries, people had travelled over the same desert as they had, by foot or on the back of a kilama or by landspeeder. It made him feel a little less lonely. When they left the cave, Jim could not help to look back at the names written on the wall. He caught sight of the the pairs of names that were united by one stroke, which had been cut off with another. In his mind, he reached out and touched the bond, still there, still unchanged. He hurried after McCoy. 

They left the caves behind and walked northwards. The landscape was as flat as it had been the past two days until the shape of the horizons changed. Over the years, the wind had shaped the sand into long, sloping sand-dunes. The sharp leeward facing the wind and the long horns stretching out behind the dune made them look a little like a giant’s discarded slipper. As they moved closer, Jim thought they looked more like mountains worn down by water. 

‘I hadn’t realised they’d be so big,’ McCoy said, stopping to look out over the dunes. 

‘They really are something, aren’t they?’ 

‘Do we climb them?’ 

‘No,’ Jim said. ‘It takes too much energy. It’s faster to walk between them.’ He turned towards the west. A soft breeze tickled his face. When he looked down, he saw the upper-most grains of sand running past his feet. ‘You feel the wind?’ 

‘What of it?’ McCoy asked. 

‘You can’t see it with the naked eye, but it moves the barchans. The Vulcans call this area the Wandering Sands.’ 

They started walking again. 

‘I didn’t realise you knew about this,’ said McCoy. ‘Never had you down as a geology buff.’ 

‘I went through a phase when I was about thirteen when I read a lot about this kind of thing,’ Jim said. ‘Did you know barchans can pass through one another? There are physics parallels I can’t say I understand, but it doesn’t disperse its energy like a regular wave in water does. Instead, if one sand-dune catches up with another, it doesn’t become one big dune. Instead, the faster one passes through the slower one and continues on its way.’ 

McCoy looked surprised, but it had nothing to do with the existence of sand solitary waves.

‘When you were thirteen?’ he said. By the tone of his voice, he had not actually misheard.

‘Yes,’ Jim said. Perhaps it was better to talk about it. ‘We’d just settled on Tarsus IV. Besides the farmers, there were plenty of geologists there. I was a bookworm – read anything I got my hands on. Deserts seemed strange and exciting, I suppose.’ 

They walked on in silence for some time. Jim could feel Bones working up the nerve to say something. When he did, he spoke quietly. 

‘I don’t think you’ve ever told me about what Tarsus IV was like before Kodos.’ 

‘Kodos was already there,’ Jim said. ‘At that point he was an ordinary governor. But I understand that you meant before the fungus destroyed the food-supplies.’ 

‘I didn’t want to use those words.’ 

Jim shrugged. 

‘It’s not that I don’t talk about it because I can’t. I just don’t think much of the time before that. It’s not upsetting, it just… doesn’t feel important.’ 

McCoy stopped in his tracks. 

‘What’s the matter?’ Jim asked. 

‘I thought I just saw a landspeeder.’ He pointed. They stood silently, waiting. Eventually, his arm dropped. ‘Perhaps I was wrong. My eyes are playing tricks on me.’ 

Jim looked in the direction Bones had pointed for a little longer. It was possible he had been mistaken, but Jim had a feeling that he had seen something. 

‘Let’s keep going,’ was all he said. 

They walked in silence. McCoy kept looking in the direction where he thought he had seen something. Jim decisively did not follow his gaze. He could not shake the sensation of being watched, though there was no one there to see them. As the dunes came nearer, he realised that he had underestimated their size. Some were tall as buildings. When they reached them and followed the slip faces of the dunes, he changed his mind. The highest ones reminded him not of buildings, but of the way a starship loomed over an onlooker in dry dock. It was a different kind of wilderness than the one in the sand-sea. There, it was the emptiness that made him feel like he should not be there, here it was the massiveness of everything. He thought again of how the Vulcans of old had described them as wandering, as if they were living things. Much like a ship, the barchans were inanimate things, but somehow they lived. The hairs stood up on his neck. It’s nothing, he told himself. _Don’t be illogical._

They skirted the slope of a dune whose sharp crest stood thirty metres over the ground. As they drew nearer to the sharp horns of the crescent shape, the crest slanted downwards, meeting the edges in a point. When Jim looked beyond the dune, all he could see were more of them, stretching put in front of him. Was there not some Vulcan myth about the barchans? He had a vague memory of a god’s cattle that were turned into sand to save them from something. He stopped and picked up a handful of sand, letting it run through his fingers. McCoy patted him on the shoulder and walked past him, taking the lead. Jim shook the sand off his glove and followed him.

A sound like whispering was heard. Jim listened, wondering if that was what sand falling down the slip face sounded like. _No, that’s not it. Then what? Footsteps!_ The realisation struck him just as he registered movement in the corner of his eye. Before he had time to react, a shape launched itself at McCoy. He shouted in surprise and instinctively delivered an upper-cut to the attacker’s face. In return, the assailant head-butted him. The sight of red blood spurred Jim into action. He ran at the attacker, who dodged him. There was something metal in their hand, held like a weapon. 

‘ _Krokyah!_ No!’ 

The attacker stopped. Jim looked in the direction of the call. 

He sat crumpled against the dune’s slip face, made small in the shadow of something so big. For a moment, Jim felt like he could not breathe. Then life rushed back into him. 

‘Spock!’ 

He dashed forward, falling to his knees beside him. When he reached out to pull him into his arms, Spock gasped in pain. Jim drew back. Instead, he took off his glove and, carefully, touched his cheek. On one side of his jaw, a vicious bruise was forming, and there was dried blood in the corners of his mouth. The lips that brushed against his finger was rough and dry. Only now did Jim realise that Spock’s hands were cuffed. 

‘Oh Spock,’ he said. ‘What happened to you?’ 

With an effort, Spock smiled a little. 

‘I had an unfortunate encounter with the subject of my studies.’ His voice was not much more than a rasp. Jim smiled back, biting his lip to keep the tears at bay. ‘Jim…’ He fumbled for Jim’s hand.

‘I’m here.’ He leaned forward and rested his forehead against Spock’s. ‘You’re safe, Spock. It’s going to be alright.’ 

Even if he knew that logically, this situation could barely get worse, for the moment it felt to him like all his fears had lifted. He felt Spock’s hand in his, his mind against Spock’s. Then a sharp pain flashed through his arm. It was so acute he did not realise at once that it was not his arm hurting. He drew back, breaking some of the contact. The pain was still there, but to him it felt duller. However well he tried to hide it, Jim could see it etched into Spock’s face. 

‘Bones, are you alright?’ 

He looked over his shoulder. McCoy was sitting on the ground, mopping up the blood on his face. 

‘I’m fine,’ he said. 

‘In that case, you have a patient.’

McCoy looked up at his attacker, who was now standing passively at his side. 

‘Give me a hand, would you?’ he said. The Vulcan took him by the elbow and helped him up. He turned to say thank you, but instead, his eyes grew. ‘Bloody hell!’ 

‘Please keep your voice down,’ the Vulcan said. ‘We are being pursued.’ 

Jim knew that voice. When she looked over at him, he saw he knew her face too.

‘Is that who I think it is?’ McCoy asked, hurrying away from her.

‘Most likely,’ the woman said, ‘provided that you think I am T’Pring.’ 

‘You’re hard to forget,’ he said and, struggling out of his backpack, crouched down in front of Spock. ‘Good to see you, Spock. You’ve been through the wringer, haven’t you?’ he said, digging out his medical kit.

Spock did not answer. Instead, he raised his head and looked up, as if he heard something. When Jim looked over at T’Pring, he saw her do the same. She moved forward, grabbing hold of McCoy and pushing him and herself against the sand-dune.

‘What the _hell_ are you…’

‘Doctor, be quiet,’ Spock whispered. ‘They’re coming.’

Jim strained his ears. Far away, he could hear the sound of an engine. As soon as he found the sound, he noticed how it was moving closer. He could not tell which direction is was coming from, but by the way T’Pring was angling her head, he thought it was from behind them. Spock was listening too, but he was clearly having trouble concentrating. Jim pressed his right arm. He did not like the way his left looked. Even through the thick jacket, it looked like his shoulder had the wrong shape, and his hand lay crumbled in his lap, shackled to its twin. Jim could feel McCoy looking at him too, nervous energy seemingly pouring off him. He wanted to do his job, but he understood the need to be silent, with the sound of landspeeders growing ever closer. Eventually, he seemed not to be able to bear it any longer. Taking off his glove, he reached over Jim and took Spock’s wrist in a steady grip to feel his pulse. When he let go, the look on his face was disconcerting. 

Jim released Spock’s arm and took his hand. Spock looked at him for a long moment. His emotions seemed written on his face: relief to see him, surprise that he was here, fear that they might be found, and steely resolve to not let the pain overwhelm him. Jim bit his lip and pressed his hand, unable to speak. Spock looked away, upwards – the engines sounded closer now, as though they were just behind them. The four of them sat paralysed, barely breathing. Jim listened for the sound of the engines slowing down, or of the landspeeder roaring closer. Instead, the sound remained unchanged, then slowly, growing fainter.

At long last, T’Pring exhaled and relaxed. 

‘They’ve turned around,’ she said. 

The two humans were already moving. McCoy scrambled to his feet and gone to Spock’s left side, while Jim got his tool kit out. While he found the tools he needed, McCoy turned on his medical scanner. 

‘How the hell did this happen?’ he asked, scanning his shoulder. 

‘It was necessary,’ Spock said weakly. 

‘“Necessary”?’ 

‘It was part of our escape.’ 

McCoy looked up at T’Pring for an explanation. 

‘We were unable to pick his handcuffs, so instead, he instructed me to dislocate his shoulder to move his hands from behind his back.’ 

‘You did much more than dislocate his shoulder,’ McCoy said through his teeth. 

‘Do not blame her,’ Spock said, his eyes half-closed now. ‘She acted on my request.’ 

Jim found the clippers he had been searching for. 

‘Bones, give me a hand.’ 

McCoy nodded and took hold of Spock’s injured arm to steady it. Jim grabbed Spock’s other wrist, found the joint of the cuffs and started cutting through it. Less than a minute later, three pieces of metal lay discarded in the sand. In their place were deep abrasions on Spock’s wrists. 

‘How long did they have you like this?’ McCoy asked, inspecting them.

‘With the exception of two pauses of perhaps half an hour, ever since I was captured,’ Spock said. McCoy shuddered. He took out a hypospray and started setting the dose. ‘What do you intend to give me?’ 

‘Morphenolog,’ McCoy said.

‘No,’ Spock said. ‘Give me terakine.’ 

‘Terakine?’ McCoy repeated. ‘Are you out of your mind? That will barely take the edge off this kind of pain.’

‘Morphenolog will likely render me unconscious, or nearly so,’ Spock said. ‘Give me as large a dose of terakine as you dare. At least then I will be capable of walking.’ 

‘You’re not walking anywhere,’ McCoy snapped. 

‘We can’t stay here,’ T’Pring said. ‘We are still too close to the camp.’ Spock nodded in agreement. 

‘We can’t really transport him in any other way,’ Jim said. ‘Short of carrying him…’ 

McCoy sighed. 

‘You’re right. I don’t like the idea of him walking around, but this is too risky – tactically and medically speaking. I can’t treat him in these conditions. Jim, do you think we can make it back to the cave before nightfall?’ 

Jim looked at the sky and then at his companions. At the moment, Spock looked like he would not be able to walk more than a few steps. T’Pring guarded her feelings well, but he could see the hallmarks of fatigue in her stance.

‘I don’t know,’ he admitted. ‘But we’ll have to try. At least there there’s shelter. We can’t stay here.’

‘Right.’ McCoy found the right ampoule for the hypospray. ‘This might make you feel jittery, but it’ll help with the pain.’ He injected the medication into the crook of Spock’s neck. ‘If you start seeing black spots, let me know, okay?’ 

Spock nodded, already sitting up a little straighter. McCoy turned on his scanner again and became engrossed in the readings. Jim looked over at T’Pring. She stood a few metres away from them, her arms folded over her chest, looking out over the desert. Against such a backdrop, she struck a lonely figure. He did not know if she had stepped aside because she wanted to be alone, or because she felt isolated from the others. Jim squeezed Spock’s hand. They exchanged looks. Spock let go of his hand, and Jim stood up. 

He approached her with his hands on his back, as if he was joining her to look at the landscape. She did not acknowledge him when he stopped at her side and looked at her. 

‘How did you escape?’ he asked.

‘There was little finesse to it,’ T’Pring said. ‘Spock picked my hand-cuffs. He had expected that we were shackled with the same type, but that was not the case. He did not know how to pick the type they had put on him.’ 

‘So he told you to break his shoulder?’

She gave him a cold look.

‘I bear him no ill-will. Had it not been for him, I would still be in that place. Most likely, I would be dead. I took no pleasure in hurting him.’ 

Jim exhaled, regaining control of himself. 

‘Of course not. I’m sorry.’ 

‘It is not important.’ She looked out over the desert again. Jim wondered what she was thinking of.

‘When was it you broke out?’ he asked instead. 

‘Just after sunset yesterday,’ she said. ‘We walked for most of the night. We reached this point approximately an hour ago.’ 

‘You should let Doctor McCoy have a look at you,’ Jim said. ‘Just to be on the safe side.’ 

‘I am healthy, just dehydrated,’ she said. He took the water-bottle from his belt and offered it to her. She seemed surprised, but took it. ‘Thank you.’ 

‘You’re welcome.’ He hesitated for a moment. ‘And thank _you_.’ 

She looked directly at him. 

‘What for?’ 

‘Getting Spock out of that place.’ 

She held his gaze for a moment. A silent understanding passed between them. Jim left her alone, and walked back. Spock’s arm was in a sling now, and McCoy was preparing another injection. The sound of their bickering was comforting.

‘I cannot be held personally responsible for the functioning of my mitral valve.’ 

‘If only you could be! It’d know to do its job in a logical way.’ 

‘The mitral valve is two flaps of muscle, Doctor. It is incapable of any thought process, and therefore, of logic.’ 

‘You think I don’t know that!?’ 

‘I make no presumptions of what you know.’ 

McCoy pushed the hypospray against his neck, making Spock wince. 

‘Are we playing nice?’ Jim said. 

‘He’s talking back,’ McCoy growled. Spock snorted. 

‘What’s your verdict, Bones?’ 

McCoy became professional again. 

‘He’s dehydrated and exhausted, and I’m not thrilled with his heart rhythm, though the benjisidrine should deal with that. I can’t say much more right now. I can’t do any work on his shoulder in this kind of environment.’ 

’So we head for the caves,’ Jim surmised. Bones shrugged, clearly not happy about it.

‘It seems like the only option,’ he said. ‘But we might as well take advantage of being hidden away and eat something.’ 

T’Pring turned around. 

‘And if they come this way again? We have no reason to think they’ve stopped the search.’ 

‘It’s safer than if we sit down in the open,’ Jim said. He was already getting the portable stove out. 

‘It is logical,’ Spock said. ‘I will not last much longer without nourishment.’

‘You can’t have eaten since yesterday,’ McCoy said to T’Pring. ‘We’ll move faster with full stomachs.’ 

She deflated. 

‘Very well. What can I do?’ 

‘You can sit down,’ McCoy said. She did. 

They ate in silence. The food, a thick soup made from a powder of freeze-dried ingredients mixed with water, was by any standards unappetising, but hunger made it much more palatable. Spock ate slowly, his bowl precariously balanced in his lap. When he first picked up his spoon, his hand shook. The tremble made him look older. Jim wondered if he should do something, but he doubted Spock would thank him for that. As he ate, his hand steadied. When Jim glanced over at McCoy, he saw how he quickly he averted his eyes from Spock. They exchanged looks, united in their concern and their relief. 

When they had eaten and were packing everything up, T’Pring turned to Jim. 

‘May I borrow your binoculars?’ 

‘Of course.’ He took them from around his neck and handed them to her. She circled the horns of the sand-dune, and for some time she was out of sight. 

‘Where did she go?’ McCoy asked. Spock looked upwards. 

‘I believe she is conducting surveillance.’ 

The others followed his gaze. T’Pring stood balanced on the crest of the dune, the binoculars raised to her eyes. She scanned the desert around them for several minutes. When she was satisfied, she jumped off the crest. Like a child riding a toboggan, she slid down the steep slip face. 

‘There is no one in sight,’ she reported, handing back the binoculars.

‘Who needs tricorders when you have sand-dunes?’ McCoy muttered and put on his backpack.

‘In this environment, with the interference from the bedrock…’ Spock said, but McCoy interrupted him. 

‘Yes, yes, I know.’ 

Jim snorted. Though he tried to hide it, Spock smiled. 

‘Are you sure you can walk?’ Jim asked. 

‘Yes.’ 

He went to Spock’s side and offered him a hand up. When he got to his feet, Spock swayed at first, and put his good hand on his shoulder to steady himself. Instinctively, Jim put his arm around his waist. Spock smiled apologetically. Jim smiled back and brushed his hair into place. 

‘Let’s go, then.’

***

They had walked the same route only an hour before. Now, retracing their own footsteps, it looked altogether different. They left the sand-dunes behind. The desert spread out around them, stretching itself from east to west and ahead to the horizon. The air over the sands trembled in the heat. Jim felt his shirt sticking to his back. It was only the temperature of the sand, hot enough that he could feel it through his gloves when he touched it, that made him happy of the thick clothes.

Spock walked beside him. The bright sunlight had made his second eyelids close. The way the thin membrane made his eyes look unsettled Jim. It was something alien in a familiar face. When he blinked, the membrane blinked too, flitting horizontally across his eyes. They did not speak; there was too much to say, things that seemed too personal to say in company. T’Pring walked a few metres behind them, and McCoy brought up the rear. Jim imagined he could feel Bones’ eyes on them, looking for any signs of exhaustion.

Ahead of them, the cliffs were still nowhere to be seen. Had they headed in the wrong direction without realising it? he wondered and took out his compass. They were going in the right direction. When he looked up at the sky and noted where the sun stood, it struck him that it was not the distance itself that was different. They were moving far slower than Bones and he had. 

Despite keeping the compass in his hand and checking it regularly, it was a relief when he finally caught sight of their goal. Judging by the position of the sun, it was late in the afternoon. Perhaps they would make it there before nightfall. 

The sound of Spock’s breathing brought him out of his thoughts. He had come to a halt, clutching his injured arm. The colour had drained from his face. 

’Spock?’

McCoy caught up with them and took him by his good arm.

‘Come on, sit down,’ he said. ‘Rest.’ 

‘No,’ Spock said. ‘The medication is wearing off. There is not time to rest.’ 

‘Can you give him another dose?’ Jim asked. Bones shook his head.

‘Not in good conscience.’ 

Jim looked ahead, measuring the distance. Then he turned back to Spock. Bones stepped back, as if sensing that this was something intimate. 

‘Spock.’ He took hold of his arm. ‘Spock, look at me.’ Slowly, Spock opened his eyes and turned to face him. Jim held his gaze and said: ‘There is no pain.’ 

Spock exhaled. 

‘There is no pain,’ he repeated. ‘It is not of the mind.’ His muscles relaxed, and his breathing slowed. ‘Thank you.’ 

Jim smiled. 

‘The least I can do. Come on.’ He placed Spock’s arm over his shoulders and put an arm around his waist. ‘We’re almost there.’ 

They continued walking. Now McCoy took the lead, followed by T’Pring. Jim and Spock made up the rear, moving slower together. At first, Spock’s arm simply rested around his neck, the support more emotional than physical. Through the bond, Jim felt how he repeated the mantras for controlling pain. It lay just beneath the surface, not gone but controlled. The nerves in his shoulder still sent the signals, but his brain refused to read them. 

Straight ahead of them, the sharp rocks that held the caves drew ever-nearer. The sun was low now, casting long shadows over the sand. The temperature was dropping. As if listening through a thin wall, Jim sensed Spock’s thoughts. _There is no pain,_ he told himself. _There is no pain._ For a moment, Spock lost his concentration, and the impulses from his damaged shoulder slipped through his defences. He breathed in sharply at the sudden pain. Jim held him a little tighter, and Spock leaned against him a little more. What had been an act of mental balance was now a battle against his own nervous system. An ache settled into Jim’s knees. He imagined it like some odd-looking malicious little creature who had taken up residence in his joints and was syncing its breathing with his footsteps, puffing up itself to hurt him every time he put his foot down. He took a better grip around Spock’s waist, adjusted the backpack’s straps and kept going. In the west, the sun was setting. Half a kilometre ahead of them, the red stone pushed up through the sand. 

By the time they had reached the first rocks, Jim’s knees were throbbing. He had promised to tell McCoy, but he had no intention to mention it now. Spock had given up his attempts to control the pain. Although he hid the extent of it well, it was draining him of energy. As they climbed the incline towards the cave, Spock leaned heavily on Jim. Bones followed closeby, ready to step in if he were to slip. T’Pring came last, a little after the others. On the surface she looked like the trek had not affected her at all, but Jim knew better than to trust the impressions of such a guarded face. 

When they stepped into the cave, Jim could not stifle a big sigh of relief. It was like coming home to safety.

‘I want to give T’Pring the once-over,’ McCoy said, taking off his backpack and getting his med-kit out. ‘How about you two go into the other chamber?’ 

‘I do not need medical attention,’ T’Pring said.

‘That’s not your decision, ma’am!’

‘Come on,’ Jim said to Spock. ‘Let’s leave them to their argument.’ 

Spock let himself be led to the opening of the passage. There he let go of Jim and, steadying himself against the wall, picked his way through the dark. Jim followed him. When they stepped into the inner chamber, he took his torch out. The first thing to be illuminated was the piled-up remnants of the sculptures. Jim felt a different kind of pain from Spock now.

‘I think it was the Kesaya,’ Jim said. 

‘Undoubtedly,’ Spock said, taking a step closer to the fragments. ‘They have destroyed several shrines. I simply hoped they would spare this one.’ 

Not knowing what to say, Jim just put the torch on its side to give them light. He struggled out of his backpack with a sigh of relief and got the ground-mat and sleeping-bag rolled out.

‘Spock?’ 

Spock was standing at the alcove in the wall, looking at the head of the goddess. Jim got to his feet again. 

‘It was the biggest fragment I could find,’ he explained. ‘It just didn’t seem right to leave it like that.’ He waved a hand towards the broken pieces of sand-stone. Spock smiled slightly. 

‘I understand.’ 

Jim stood quietly, waiting for the inevitable discovery. The surprise barely registered on Spock’s face. All he did was raise an eyebrow, but Jim could sense his curiosity. Spock reached out and touched the paper with his good hand. Carefully, he unrolled the first few inches of the scroll. Then he looked back at Jim, who shrugged. 

‘I took it with me on a whim,’ he said. ‘I don’t even know why I left it here. I suppose as an offering.’ He paused for a moment. ‘I asked her to protect you.’ 

Spock’s gaze softened. 

‘You prayed to K’Tarek.’ 

‘I suppose so,’ Jim said. ‘You pray to my god sometimes. I might as well return the favour. Not that I knew quite what to do. I improvised. Seems to have worked, though.’ 

Spock smiled. Even now, when he saw pale and bruised, it was like the sun breaking through the clouds. 

‘If I ever need be reminded of the depth of your commitment to me, I will remember that you broke the second commandment for me.’ 

Jim laughed. 

‘Just don’t tell my rabbi. Come on, you should lie down.’ 

Spock complied. When he sat down, he gave an audible sigh of relief. 

‘How are you feeling?’ Jim asked as he turned to his backpack and got out the portable stove. It took Spock several seconds to respond. 

‘What was it Doctor McCoy said? That I had been through the wringer?’

‘Yes, that was it.’

‘It feels apt.’ 

Jim looked up from lighting the stove and smiled in sympathy. Turning his attention back to his work, he got out a flask of water and poured it all into the pan. Over the naked flame, it only took a few minutes before it started boiling. Turning the gas off, Jim lifted the pan off and got out a wash-cloth. All the while, he felt Spock watch him through half-closed eyes. He could not tell if it was the exhaustion or the pain doing it. Jim smiled at him. He smiled back slightly. 

‘Despite the wringing, I am…’ Spock paused, looking for the words. ‘Better for seeing you.’ 

Jim laughed softly. 

‘You have no idea how good it is to see you too.’ 

Spock’s smile widened a little. 

‘I have a good idea of it.’ 

‘Of course you do.’ Jim soaked the washcloth in the water and wrung it out. ‘This is going to sting like hell.’ 

‘It cannot be worse than the injuries themselves,’ Spock said. Still he flinched when the washcloth touched the side of his face. 

‘Told you.’ Carefully, Jim dabbed at his face with the cloth. He could feel Spock’s restraining his responses, but he also felt the pain he was in. ‘You don’t have to hold back,’ he told him. Spock shook his head stiffly. 

‘I prefer it,’ he said. ‘I do not want to cause you distress.’ 

Jim rinsed the cloth in cold water and wet it in the warmed water again. 

‘You think this isn’t?’ Even the pressure of the washcloth made him tense with pain. ‘What did they do to you, Spock?’ 

He waited to answer until he had taken the cloth off his jaw and started to wipe his forehead instead. Under the dust and grime, the bruises were a more vivid green. 

‘Nothing more sophisticated than brute force,’ he said. ‘I believe that injury was caused by a blow with a nerve disruptor. I am starting to think that it fractured my mandible.’ 

Jim could not stop the incredulous sound he made. 

‘Bones is going to be hopping mad.’ 

‘Is he not already?’ 

He shrugged, conceding the point. He finished cleaning Spock’s other cheek, which was just as bruised, and rinsed the cloth again. 

‘I’m sorry if this hurts.’ He pressed the cloth against his lips, working at the dry blood in the corners of his mouth. The noise of the washcloth scraping against Spock’s stubble seemed magnified. Jim was not sure what to call the look in Spock’s eyes. It looked almost like reproach. When Jim wet the washcloth again and undid the sling to get at his left hand, Spock spoke.

‘Why did you come after me, Jim?’ 

Jim stopped, the limp hand in his. 

‘What else could I have done?’ he asked. 

‘Followed the protocol we agreed on.’ 

‘I would have, if it’d have worked,’ Jim said, unable to conceal his annoyance. Spock frowned. 

‘What do you mean by “if”?’ 

‘I did what you told me,’ he explained, ‘and I never got further than some secretary. They asked for no information…’

‘Did you give them the codeword?’ Spock asked. 

‘Yes, of course. But they did nothing…’ 

Spock shook his head. 

‘No, Jim. That is not right.’ 

‘They didn’t even ask what coordinates you’d called from.’ 

‘Because that information would have served no purpose,’ Spock said. ‘The protocol was for a diplomatic response, not a rescue. The codeword was a signal for the Federation to put more pressure on the Vulcan government, not… swoop in and make the situation worse.’ 

Jim stared at him, stunned. 

‘Why did you not tell me this?’ 

Spock sighed. 

‘Would you have let me go if I had?’ 

Jim sighed too. He was too tired and relieved to know Spock was safe to be as angry as he felt he should be. Instead he soaked the washcloth in water again and started cleaning his hand.

‘Bones was right. We should have hypoed you and tied you up.’ 

Spock did not answer. His face had gone stiff with pain, even from the gentle touch of the cloth. When Jim guided his hand down, he must have applied pressure to something, because Spock gasped with pain. The muscles in his neck strained and for a moment he bared his teeth. 

‘I’m sorry,’ Jim said. Spock shook his head, his eyes closed now. He reached out towards him with his right hand. Jim took it in his, but did not start cleaning it at once. Spock opened his eyes slightly and met his gaze. Wordlessly, Jim smiled, a small peace-offering. As if it took a lot of effort, Spock smiled back. Jim leaned in and kissed him. 

Ever since the events in the Mutara Nebula, he had had a recurring dream, one he hated even more than the ones about Tarsus IV or about Ekos or about what he had seen through the impenetrable glass of the reactor chamber. In the dream, he kissed Spock, but he did not answer the kiss. It was not just indifference or rebuttal. He could never tell in the dream if he was dead, or even there for real.

The feeling of Spock’s lips pursing against his felt like it cemented the fact that he was not dreaming. His presence was so palpably real, from the warmth of his skin and the roughness of his stubble to the taste of copper on his lips. His hand moved in Jim’s grip, pushing two fingers against his. He could feel his thoughts, full of reassurance and gratitude. Jim drew back enough to look him in the eye. 

‘Never do anything like this again.’ 

Spock’s gaze softened with regret. 

‘I cannot make that promise.’ 

‘I know,’ Jim said. ‘But please, don’t.’ He wiped the tears out of his eyes. ‘You could have been killed.’ 

‘I was not.’ 

‘But you were injured,’ Jim said. Taking his right hand in a better grip, he started washing it. 

‘For the information I collected, it was a small price to pay.’ 

Jim shot him a look. As if to explain himself, Spock said: 

‘I have an insight into their command structure I did not have before. I confirmed the membership of several potential members. I was able to get a good look at their weapons, and I learned that they are refining a number of chemical agents with the hope of creating a stockpile.’ 

Jim looked up, startled. 

‘That’s worrying.’ 

Spock nodded. 

‘In addition, I saved a life. T’Pring would likely have been executed if she had stayed, and I do not believe that I would have been able to escape on my own.’ 

Jim sighed. 

‘I’m glad about that,’ he said, letting go of his hand and moving to take his boots off. ‘But I wish you could have done those things without pulling your arm out of its socket.’ 

‘ _Kaiidth_ ,’ Spock said. Even after all these years with humans, he had still not found an idiom to replace that Vulcan one. “What is, is” did not have the same ring to it.

‘Yes, I suppose so.’ 

They were silent as Jim unrolled Spock’s leg-wraps. Grains of sand fell from the puttees. His skin bore the impression of the cloth. In places where the puttees had slipped after days of not rewrapped, the sand had scratched his legs, almost breaking the skin. Once he got Spock’s boots off, the smell almost made him gag. The socks were encrusted with blood. When he started removing them, he saw how Spock bit his lip. Then he heard the ugly sound of the scabs get pulled off the wounds. He threw the sock aside and, trying not to look too closely at his foot, attempted to get the worst of the blood off. 

‘Is this all from today?’ Jim asked once he had got off his other sock, which had dried into the wounds just as the other. 

‘I believe most of it was caused by our initial escape.’ Spock said, looking away into the distance. 

‘You should have said something.’ However much he did not want to look, it was difficult not to take in the sight of the feet, raw and bleeding. ‘Bones could have done something so you didn’t have to walk like this.’

‘It was better not to expose them,’ Spock said. ‘Besides, my shoulder distracted me from it.’ That seemed still to be the case. He was holding onto his left arm, pushing it against his body to keep the weight off his shoulder. His hand lay palm-up in his lap, the fingers half-bent and stiff. Jim told himself that it was probably just a result of removing the dirt from his face, but Spock looked paler than before. He was watching him through half-closed eyes. ‘Jim?’ 

He moved closer. 

‘Yes, Spock?’ 

‘The things I found out,’ Spock said. ‘We cannot afford to lose that information.’ Slowly, he let go of his injured arm and held up his right hand. Only then did Jim realise what he meant. He did not say anything, only leaned closer. Spock’s fingers spread out and one by one found the meld-points on his face. Their minds rushed towards each other. Jim felt the memories being offered up to him. He plunged into them. The whirl of images, emotions and impressions bombarded him. 

Then suddenly it was over. Spock took his fingers from his face, while Jim gasped for breath. Receiving the memories had felt like falling down the rabbit-hole. Now, it was like he had lived those days himself. They might as well be his own memories.

From the passage to the outside cave came the sound of footsteps. Jim caught his breath and wiped the sweat off his face just as McCoy stepped into the chamber. 

‘Oh, Bones. Hello.’ He took a moment to compose himself. His head felt strange after the rush of information. ’How’s T’Pring?’ 

‘Considering she’s been held captive for almost two weeks, remarkably good,’ McCoy said. ‘Other than exhaustion and some nasty blisters, she’s fine.’ He caught sight of Spock’s feet. ‘Speaking of nasty blisters… You’re lucky I have a dermal regenerator with me. But first thing’s first. Let’s have a look at that shoulder. Jim, help me get that coat off him?’

Jim realised he should have thought of that before, but as soon as they started, he was glad that he had not tried to take it off by himself. After failing to get Spock’s injured arm through the sleeve, McCoy got out a pair of scissors and cut through the fabric.

‘I’ll stitch it up for you in the morning,’ he said. ‘That will have to do.’ After the difficulty with the coat, McCoy did not even try to take the shirt off, but simply cut the sleeve open. As Bones pulled the fabric aside, Jim caught a glimpse of his facial expression. His eyes grew and he clenched his jaw. The sight of Spock’s bruised and misshapen shoulder disturbed him, but it clearly meant something more to McCoy.

A moment later, the worry on his face was gone. Instead, he looked concentrated but unbothered. 

‘Right,’ he said, putting on a pair of gloves and picking up Spock’s limp hand. ‘Can you move your fingers?’ They barely twitched. ‘Hm.’ He tried to bend his fingers and his wrist. With every movement, Spock would exhale through his teeth. Every time, McCoy would ease off, and Jim would catch yet another look of concern on his face. The small gasps of pain were too much to bear. He pressed Spock’s right arm to reassure him, stood up and left the chamber. 

From the mouth of the cave, a slither of the twilight sky was visible. Close to the entrance, T’Pring was seated. Her headscarf was folded in her lap, and her head was bowed as she worked to comb the tangles out of her hair. McCoy must have lent her his comb, he thought. Then he realised that he might be violating Vulcan customs by seeing her like this. 

‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ he said and turned away. 

‘You may stay.’ 

He stopped, turning back. She was looking over his shoulder at him. 

‘You have not broken any taboos,’ she said. 

‘Good.’ He stepped closer. ‘I’m still learning.’ 

‘Human women do not cover their hair, do they?’ 

‘Some do. Some men do it too. Usually for religious reasons.’ 

‘I know very little of Earth religion.’ 

‘It’s not as monolithic as here,’ he explained. ‘There are lots of different beliefs.’ 

‘What of your religion?’ she asked. ‘Do women cover their hair? You seemed embarrassed.’ 

‘Some do,’ he said, ‘but no one in my family. I just didn’t want to embarrass you.’ 

‘Vulcans do not feel embarrassment.’ 

Jim snorted. 

‘That’s not true.’ 

She did not answer, and instead went back to undoing the tangles in her hair. Jim leaned against the cave opening’s lip, thinking of all he had learned. Eventually, he spoke. 

‘I was sorry to hear about Stonn.’ 

T’Pring looked up. 

‘Spock told you?’ 

‘Not in so many words,’ he said, hesitating to explain. ‘He shared his memories of the past two days with me. For… safe-keeping, I suppose.’ 

She cocked an eyebrow. He had a feeling that she was thinking what he had, that the logical reason to hand over his memories was that he was not taking his survival for granted. Thankfully, T’Pring did not address it. Instead, she said: 

‘Your condolences are appreciated.’ 

They were silent for a little while. 

‘I don’t want to overstep,’ Jim said, ‘but… I’m sorry that your daughter has got mixed up in this.’

T’Pring put down the comb and looked at him. 

‘It is strange that your language uses the same words to express sympathy for a death, and for other regrettable events.’ 

‘I’d never thought of that,’ he said, a little taken aback. ‘I didn’t mean to imply that anything had happened to your daughter…’ 

She made a gesture as if to disperse his apologies. 

‘I do not know where she is,’ she said, ‘but I know she is alive.’ 

‘Do Vulcan parents have a link to their children?’ 

She nodded. 

‘Yes. It is not as strong as a wedding bond, but it is of great importance.’ 

Jim felt he should have realised that before. He wondered now if the official notification of death had been how Sarek had found out about what had happened to his son ten years ago, or if he had already known. 

It was an odd feeling, having this kind of conversation with someone he had thought he disliked. He knew that his impression of T’Pring was based on a meeting that lasted less than half an hour, and that it was muddled by lingering jealousy and suspicion. T’Pring had seemed, like so much of Vulcan, part of Spock’s painful past. He knew that his impression, formed on that short meeting of what must have been a momentous day for her and quite an overwhelming day for him was – for lack of a better word – illogical. Now that he actually talked to her, he was getting a sense of her which was altogether different from the image he had had twenty-five years before. 

His knees ached from a long day’s walking. He might as well ask. 

‘Would you mind if I sit down?’ 

She looked at him again, a little perplexed. 

‘Sit,’ she said. He sat down beside her at the mouth of the cave, sighing with the relief of being off his feet. As he stretched out his legs carefully, she watched him. ‘Are you in pain?’ 

‘Just my knees playing up.’

‘“Playing up”?’ 

‘Causing me problems,’ he explained. 

‘Is it an old injury?’ she asked. Jim laughed. 

‘If only. No, just arthritis. I can’t blame it on anyone, only on a genetic predisposition and one too many rough landing-missions. That’s what I tell myself, at least.’

The way she looked at him changed subtly. 

‘You have damaged knee-joints, and yet you have travelled two days by foot?’ 

‘There wasn’t really any other way,’ Jim said. ‘How did you get out here?’ 

‘By hoverbike,’ she said as she put down the comb and started braiding her hair. ’It is a fast way of travelling, but it is not stealthy. That likely led to my capture.’ 

‘If we hadn’t run into you two, we would have walked straight in the path of that search-party that was after you,’ Jim observed. ‘I don’t think there’s any way that’s really safe.’ 

She made a gesture reminiscent of a shrug. Jim learned against the cave wall and looked out. The light on the rocks had died, stripping them of their blood-red hue. It was getting cold. 

‘Can I ask you something?’ he said. 

‘Yes,’ T’Pring said, twisting the braid into a bun. 

‘I thought that the custom was that only married women wore head-scarves.’ 

She cocked an eyebrow at him, and her hand closed around the fabric of the scarf. 

‘What of it?’ 

‘I’m just asking to satisfy my own curiosity,’ he said. ‘I don’t mean to offend.’ 

She exhaled sharply and picked up her scarf. 

‘It is customary for widows to not cover their hair.’ 

‘So why do you?’ he asked. ‘Aren’t widows usually matriarchs of sorts?’ 

She averted her gaze and started folding the scarf to put it on instead. 

‘I am too young to be given any such respect,’ she said. ‘I would only be seen as a potential mate. But I am not required to remarry. I have no such biological need. I will not be anyone’s property.’ 

‘I thought that was just flowery language in the wedding ritual,’ Jim said. 

‘Up to a point,’ T’Pring said. ‘But beyond that, it is not rhetoric. I do not want to be courted, and I do not want to be matched. I spent thirty-one years with my mind connected to the mind of a man I did not love, and who did not love me, all because of an archaic custom. I would not inflict it on my daughters, and I will not participate in it again.’ 

Jim did not know quite how to answer. T’Pring put her scarf in place and then said: 

‘Besides, I like it.’ 

Jim laughed. 

‘All good reasons.’ He could not help feeling a little embarrassed. 

‘May I ask you something in turn?’ T’Pring asked. 

‘Of course.’

‘You must be aware that Spock is well-known on Vulcan.’ 

‘Yes.’ It was difficult to miss.  
‘There was a rumour,’ T’Pring said. She spoke slower than before, as if not sure that she wanted to say this. 

‘What kind of rumour?’

She looked at him. 

‘That Spock died, and that you brought him to Mount Seleya. That his father asked for the refusion.’

Jim shrugged. 

‘They’re not wrong.’ 

T’Pring frowned. 

‘How is that possible?’ she asked. ‘The death of the body is irreversible. How can he now be alive?’ 

‘You tell me,’ he said. ‘You must have thought there was some truth to it, since you asked me.’ 

‘I stopped believing or disbelieving in rumours about Spock a long time ago,’ she said. ‘My logical faculties are better served elsewhere.’ 

‘But you still want to know?’ 

‘Yes.’ 

‘It’s a long story.’ He considered it. ‘How about this? If we get out here alive, I’ll tell you, at some point when we’re not fleeing for our lives.’ 

She watched him in silence for a moment. 

‘Very well.’ She looked at him a little closer. ‘I understand that in many places in the Federation, you are something of a legend too.’

‘I’ve heard it said.’ 

‘It must be disruptive.’

‘Oh, people stopped recognising me once I started going grey. Turns out ageing is good for something after all.’ 

He took her raised eyebrows as a show of appreciation. Then she handed him the comb she had been using. 

‘Please give this to Doctor McCoy, with my thanks.’ 

‘Of course.’ 

‘I wish to be alone now.’ She moved so her back was against the wall and sat down in the position used for meditation. Jim moved away from her, not wanting to disturb her. He went over to the well and ran his hand over the edge of the masonry. It was uneven in a way that made him think that at one time, there had been a pattern carved into the stone. He wondered what it had been – some abstract decoration, or people and animals, or writing? He could barely see the dips in the stone, but he could feel them, even as he knew his hands were wearing away more of the stone. When he looked down into the well, he could not see anything. Even when he shone his torch into it, all he saw was a distant glimmer. Only the humid air and the sound of the rushing water told him about the stream below. He wondered how many travellers had stood here like he did now. Were there reminders of them down there – stones dropped hundreds of years ago and now worn smooth, cherished and unimportant possessions alike, thrown on purpose or let go by accident into that dark? Had the people who had written their names on these walls rested their hands against the stone and worn down the reliefs over time? 

‘Jim.’ 

He turned around. McCoy was at the passage entrance, looking grim-faced and tired. Jim walked over to him, all thoughts of the past gone.

‘How is he?’ 

McCoy sighed to himself and then looked him in the eye. 

‘Not good. He needs surgery on his shoulder. I can’t do anything here and now – I don’t dare, with only a field-kit. I don’t have a good enough picture about what is going on, without access to proper imaging technology. What I do know is that he has broken his humerus and clavicle, and he has at least fractured the scapula. He’s torn several ligaments and he likely has nerve damage.’

‘How badly?’ 

‘Badly enough.’ 

‘Is there really nothing you can do?’ 

He shook his head. 

‘Not in good conscience. I could make it worse from not having the right information. Keeping any incision clean in this environment would be almost impossible – it’s more likely than not to get infected. And to be honest, I’m exhausted. I haven’t had a proper night’s sleep for days. There is no way I  can operate.’ He held up his hands. There was a slight but distinct tremble in them. ‘He runs enough risk of losing the use of that arm without me poking around.’ 

Jim swallowed. The thought of that was more than he felt he could handle right now. Instead, he asked: 

‘What about the pain?’ 

McCoy handed him a hypospray. 

‘That’s morphenolog,’ he explained. ‘It might knock him out, so I thought it might be better if you administered it, if you wanted to talk to him first. The dosage is set. You just have to inject it.’

‘Thanks.’ He looked at his friend more closely. ‘You should sleep.’ 

McCoy rubbed his eyes. 

‘Yes, yes, I know.’ 

‘Take the second sleeping-bag,’ he said. ‘I’ll be fine.’ 

‘What about T’Pring?’ 

Jim nodded towards her where she sat, eyes closed. 

‘I think she’s asleep already.’ 

‘Huh.’ McCoy blinked a few times. ‘I think I’ll just go to sleep too.’ 

‘Good idea.’ 

‘If anything changes with Spock – anything at all – just wake me.’ 

Jim nodded. 

‘Of course.’ He patted him on the shoulder. ‘Sleep tight, Bones.’ 

‘Thanks. You too.’ 

Jim made his way into the second chamber. Even before he saw him, he could hear Spock, breathing unevenly. As he stepped closer, he was certain that now he was paler than before. He was wrapped in a blanket, but his injured shoulder was still uncovered. McCoy had splinted his arm, but the shoulder itself still had the same odd shape from the displaced bones. 

‘Hi,’ Jim said. ‘How are you feeling?’ 

‘Like I have been through a second wringer.’

Despite the humour, his voice was not much more than a whisper. Jim gave him a compassionate look as he got an extra blanket from his backpack. He lowered himself down onto his knees at Spock’s right side and started making a makeshift bed with the blanket. 

‘You should not sleep like that,’ Spock said. 

‘There’s not much of an option,’ Jim said, spreading out his legs. It was better than sleeping directly on the stone floor, but not by much. His back would punish him for it in the morning. ‘Don’t try scooting over and giving me space,’ he warned Spock. 

‘I would, if I could move,’ he answered. ‘However, the pain is making it difficult.’ 

Jim reached out and stroked his cheek. Spock’s eyes slid shut, and he leaned against his hand. 

‘I’ve got something for it,’ Jim said. ‘Morphenolog.’ 

Spock sighed, clearly not happy about that he needed something so strong. 

‘Very well,’ he said and leaned his head away from Jim’s hand, exposing his neck. ‘Proceed.’ 

Jim took out the hypospray and found the right spot. He fumbled with the plunger, but then managed to push it down. The hypospray hissed. The tenseness seemed to melt out of Spock’s body. Jim put the hypospray away and placed a hand on Spock’s chest. 

‘Are you feeling okay?’ 

Slowly, he turned his head back to look at him. He nodded, then said: 

‘You’re on the wrong side.’ 

Jim smiled. For over twenty-five years, he had always slept on Spock’s left.

‘Yes, I know. Just don’t want to roll over and hurt you.’ 

Spock looked at him with unfocused eyes. 

‘Logical,’ he murmured. His eyes slid shut, and he was asleep. Jim let his hand linger for a moment, watching how it moved with the rise and fall of Spock’s chest. Then he lay down too. The rock floor was hard and uneven, but still he felt himself drift off at once. The warmth emanating from Spock’s body made him feel like he might as well be in his own bed. 

***

‘Hey, Jim, rise and shine.’ 

Jim groaned, rolled onto his back and rubbed his eyes. 

‘Is it morning?’ he murmured, forcing his eyes open. McCoy was crouching beside him. 

‘More or less. The sun is on its way up.’ 

‘Did you get any sleep?’ he asked Bones and sat up. Halfway up, he stopped and hissed at the pain in his back. 

‘More than you did, by the looks of it,’ Bones said, smiling. ‘How’s your back?’ 

‘About as good as my knees.’ 

‘I’ll prepare you a shot, then.’ 

Jim’s brain suddenly caught up and registered the empty spot beside him.

‘Where’s Spock?’ 

‘Relax,’ McCoy said. ‘He’s awake. I left him minding the fire.’ He stood up and offered him a hand. ‘Come on, there’s breakfast.’ 

Jim took his hand and let himself be helped up. There was something so mundane about this, he reflected, like they were out hiking. For a moment, he thought of sausages and scavenged eggs. It was far better than freeze-dried gruel. 

In the outer chamber, Spock was stirring the pot on the portable stove. At first glance, he looked better than the day before. He had combed his hair and put on a fresh shirt – if Jim was not mistaken, his spare. When he sat down beside him, the picture changed. His stance was stiff, and each movement of his torso was measured. His hand, suspended in a sling, was strangely limp. The bruises on his face were more prominent now, having gone from pale green to a startling viridescent. When he turned his head and looked up at Jim, he could see the places where his skin had been broken. Despite the pain it seemed to cause him, he smiled. 

‘Good morning, Jim.’  
‘Good morning.’ He sat down beside him, still watching him. Spock raised an eyebrow a fraction, though not with quite the finesse he usually managed. ‘I’m trying to decide where I can kiss you without it hurting,’ Jim explained under his breath. 

‘I would not know,’ Spock said, still straight-faced. ‘The logical solution would be to form a hypothesis and test it.’ 

Jim laughed and kissed him on the ear. 

‘How are you feeling?’ he asked.  
‘Somewhat better than yesterday,’ Spock said, ‘but much of that is down to Doctor McCoy’s care.’ 

‘All I did was pump you full of painkillers,’ McCoy said, taking the pot off the fire and dividing the contents into four bowls. 

‘I never purported you did any more than that. I said I was only somewhat better.’ 

McCoy shot him a look and pushed a bowl into his good hand. 

‘Eat.’ 

Jim smiled at their bickering. All the played-up annoyance made him feel safe, but he knew better than to say any of that to Bones. Instead, he accepted the bowl he was offered. Just then, he heard the gravel outside the cave be disturbed. A moment later, T’Pring stepped into the cave. 

‘Good morning,’ Jim said, shaking off the feeling of foreboding that had come over him when he had heard the footsteps.

‘Come have some breakfast,’ McCoy said. She sat down with them. ‘There you go, honey.’ 

She looked at the gruel, at McCoy and then at Spock and Jim. 

‘What is honey?’ she asked. 

‘A sweet, thick fluid produced by Earth insects from flower nectar,’ Spock explained. 

‘It’s an endearment,’ Jim said. ‘Like _talukh_ or _ashal-veh_ , but not necessarily as intimate.’ 

‘It is an unfortunate feature of the doctor’s idiolect to use such terms of near-strangers.’ 

‘Hm,’ T’Pring said, but did not comment further. 

‘You know what, though?’ Jim said, watching what was left of his breakfast unenthusiastically. ‘Some honey would be just the thing for this. This stuff is terrible.’ 

‘You won’t need to eat it for much longer,’ McCoy said darkly. Jim looked at him questioningly. ‘We have a supply issue,’ he explained. ‘We brought enough food to last the two of us five days, plus meals for one other person for one day. We’ve gone from two to four mouths to feed.’ 

‘There must be things we can eat,’ Jim said. 

‘We are in a desert,’ T’Pring said cooly. ‘By definition, nothing grows here.’ 

‘She’s right, Jim,’ McCoy said. ‘I can’t remember seeing anything edible.’ 

Jim put down his spoon and bowl and stroked his chin. 

‘Spock, you were captured in the second night of your expedition, isn’t that right?’ 

‘Yes,’ Spock said. 

‘And you were supposed to be gone four days. Doesn’t that mean that there are two days’ rations for three people left?’ 

‘Unless they has been scavenged, yes.’ 

‘It didn’t look that way,’ Jim said. Spock looked at him. 

‘You found the landspeeder?’ 

It was McCoy who answered. 

‘We did.’ 

‘I’m sorry, Spock,’ Jim said. 

Spock closed his eyes for a moment. 

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘As am I.’ 

‘I don’t really care to go back there,’ McCoy admitted. 

‘But it would give us an opportunity to give them a proper burial,’ Jim said. Then, he turned to Spock. ‘I thought it best to leave the site untouched when we found it. But now they know we’re here…’

‘An understandable decision,’ Spock said. ‘But I believe Doctor McCoy’s instinct might be right, though not for those reasons.’ 

‘You always find something to disagree with, don’t you?’ McCoy muttered. 

‘You know where the crash-site is, but so do the Kesaya. They would expect us to head for it, for this very reason.’ 

‘So then we starve instead,’ T’Pring surmised. 

‘It’s not just the food,’ McCoy said. ‘For one, we don’t have enough water-bottles. We have enough for two people for two days. That means one day with the four of us.’ 

‘It took us half a day to get from the crash-site to here,’ Jim said. ‘Half a day there, get what we need, then half a day back here. This is the closest spring, after all.’

‘It took me and you half a day,’ McCoy pointed out. ‘It’s going to be different if there’s four of us.’ 

‘So we split up,’ T’Pring said. 

‘No,’ Jim said quickly. ‘We stay together. Bones is right. It takes longer the larger the group is.’ 

‘But we need food and water,’ Spock said. 

‘And medication,’ McCoy said. ‘Did the medic have a well-stocked kit?’ 

‘I never saw it,’ Spock admitted. ‘But I would assume so.’ 

‘This is assuming that all of this is intact,’ Jim said. ‘Hypo ampoules can break. As for the food, if something pierces the containers, you can’t use the stuff.’ 

‘And T’Son and Kelek had their water-bottles on them when they died,’ Spock said. ‘They would have to be decontaminated.’ 

‘Where precisely are we?’ T’Pring asked. ‘I was trying to ascertain it earlier today, but I was unsuccessful.’ 

Jim took out the map. McCoy disassembled the stove to make room for it. 

‘We’re here,’ he said, pointing. ‘The crash-site is here. Shi’Kahr is down here.’ 

‘Whether or not we go via the crash-site, we would be on foot, would we not? How long would that take?’ 

‘It took Bones and me two days to get from here, just by the pass–’ he pointed ‘–to where we are now.’ 

‘But the passes are not easily crossed on foot,’ Spock said. 

‘We wouldn’t necessarily be on foot,’ McCoy said. ‘We should contact T’Paal.’ 

‘They would never come get us this deep into the desert,’ Jim said. 

‘Well we can’t walk!’ he snapped. ‘And this talk about going back and forth to the crash-site – that would take a whole day, and then another two, probably three to get back to Shi’Kahr! I’ve got five standard doses of terakine left, and only two days’ worth of tri-ox compound. We’re all exhausted, mentally and physically. You won’t last another four days, Jim! Not at the rate I’m using up the pain medication we’ve got. And Spock should be in hospital, not traipsing about the desert!’ 

‘It is not so simple, Doctor,’ Spock said. 

‘How is walking into the middle of nowhere on a wing and a prayer logical?’ he snapped. 

‘There are degrees of risk.’ 

Jim bit his lip. He sympathised with McCoy’s argument, but Spock was right. 

‘Bones, if we use the communicator, they’ll likely find us.’ 

‘“Likely”?’ McCoy repeated. ‘Those are better odds than definitely dying of thirst in some goddamn wasteland!’ 

‘No, Doctor,’ Spock said. ‘If the Kesaya catches up with us, they will execute you and Jim at once. As for T’Pring and myself, we would be punished for our escape. It would be a slow and painful death.’ 

McCoy took a deep breath, as if preparing to answer, but then deflated. He sat down again and pulled out his communicator. He opened it, pressed a few buttons and then, with a sigh, let it clatter to the floor. 

‘Great. The damned thing isn’t even working.’ 

‘We’ll need it later,’ Jim said. 

‘What are we going to do about it?’ McCoy asked. ‘Spock can’t do that kind of repair in his state.’ 

T’Pring picked up the communicator. 

‘I can do it,’ she said. ‘Likely better than Spock.’ 

‘I agree,’ Spock said. 

‘Well, at last some good news,’ McCoy said. T’Pring was already looking closely at the device. 

‘The sand has probably displaced some of the smaller components. It’s a common problem.’ She looked at Jim. ‘I believe you have a toolkit, Captain?’ 

‘Yes,’ Jim said. ‘I’ll go get it.’ 

He went into the other chamber and took the kit out of his backpack. The stone head on the ledge watched him. He paused for a moment, looking back at it, then turned away and went back to the others. T’Pring took the box from him and started working immediately. 

‘There is another issue to consider,’ Spock said. The others looked at him. ‘The fact that the Kesaya has desecrated this shrine shows that they know of its existence. Therefore, they will search it.’ 

Jim looked around the cave and sighed. What had seemed like shelter a moment ago now seemed like a death-trap.

‘So,’ McCoy said. ‘What do we do, Jim?’ 

He weighed the information he had. 

‘Bones, you have rehydration tablets in your kit, don’t you?’ 

‘Of course.’ 

‘Can we make the water last longer with that?’ 

‘That’s not how they work…’ He interrupted himself, realising it was futile. ‘If we strictly ration the water and use them, we might buy ourselves another half day.’ 

‘Then this is what we do,’ Jim said. ‘We head for the cliffs where Bones and I slept the first night. We avoid the crash-site. I’m sorry, Bones, but it’ll save us the detour, and the risk is too great. Hopefully we will make it to the cliffs by nightfall. Then tomorrow, we contact T’Paal and try to get as close to the pass as possible.’ 

‘We’ll make it work,’ McCoy said. He looked unhappy, but he knew better than to argue. Jim was glad he did not have to defend his decisions. There were no good options here, but someone had to decide which bad ones to choose. 

‘I suggest we get going, as soon as possible.’ 

‘This will need more work,’ T’Pring said, glancing up from the disassembled communicator. 

‘Hang onto it,’ Jim said. ‘You’re in charge of the toolkit. Bones?’

‘I need to give you your shots, but that’s it.’ 

‘Spock?’ 

‘I see no need to delay.’ 

‘Then let’s move out.’ 

In a flurry of movement, they started getting ready – rinsing dishes; refilling water-bottles; rolling up bedding. Now that their possessions were being packed up, the cave changed character. It was yet again an abandoned sacred site with nothing to connect it to the present. A feeling of melancholy settled over Jim as he looked around the cave while McCoy gave him the injections he needed. Putting aside the hypospray, McCoy retrieved Spock’s coat, helped him into the remaining sleeve and started sewing up the cut-up shoulder with an intricate stitch. As he worked, Spock was looking around the cave too. 

‘Have you been here before?’ Jim asked. Spock nodded. 

‘Yes. My father took me here when I was a child. It is a memory I cherish.’ 

‘So you wrote your names on the wall?’ McCoy asked. 

‘The most recent writing is over 600 years old, Doctor. It would be an act of vandalism to leave a mark on these walls.’ 

McCoy did not take the bait, but went back to his stitching. 

‘I wish I could have seen it before it was destroyed,’ Jim said. 

‘I believe there are archeological scans,’ Spock said. 

‘Then perhaps it could be restored, once all this is over.’ 

‘It is possible.’ 

Jim sighed. He wondered how many shrines like these the Kesaya had destroyed, and how many of them had not been recorded first. The thought was almost a physical ache. 

‘There,’ McCoy said, cutting the suture. ‘That’ll do. Not my neatest work, but I’m not used to sew in fabric.’ 

‘Thank you.’ Spock looked at the seam. ‘Your medical Luddism has always puzzled me, but it’s pleasing that it serves a purpose.’ 

‘I think what he’s saying is that if you get bored of surgery, you could always become a tailor,’ Jim said. 

T’Pring looked confused. 

‘I don’t believe those skills are transferrable.’ 

McCoy laughed heartily. 

‘Come on, let’s go,’ he said, putting on his backpack and heading for the cave-mouth. Jim followed suit. The two Vulcans followed. He listened to them; from what he gathered, Spock was trying to explain the intricacies of friendly mockery. 

They left the red cliffs behind, heading south-west. The Tanit foothills could be seen in the distance to the east. To the west, the sand-sea stretched beyond the horizon. In this flat landscape, it was easy to see how people of old had thought the sky was a solid thing. Jim thought it looked like a domed ceiling which the sun walked across. It was so unlike from the blue skies from his childhood in Iowa – a different sun, different stars. The first time he had gone off-planet, he had been twelve years old. In the course of his service in Starfleet, he had visited so many planets he had lost count. Now all that seemed gone. This alien world, with its red sky and its eternal deserts, seemed impossibly strange. 

As they walked, he turned his face up towards the sky. It might as well be a vault, with nothing beyond it. Some part of him had unconsciously approached this as if the Enterprise was in orbit. He had been convinced that a solution would present itself, like it always had before – a shuttle would zoom down to rescue them or Scotty would find a way to lock onto them. 

But none of that could happen. That thought would not let go. Not even the rising heat distracted him. It was still on his mind when they stopped around noon. Once they had eaten, McCoy rolled his ground-mat out and lay down, falling asleep at once. T’Pring excused herself. Jim felt Spock watching him. 

‘Jim?’ 

He turned.

‘What are you thinking of?’ Spock asked. Jim sighed.

‘That I’ve botched this entire… I’d say “mission”, but that’s not really it. Whatever it is, I’ve been an idiot from beginning to end.’ He rubbed his eyes. ‘I should have done what you told me to do.’ 

‘I did not tell you enough,’ Spock said. ‘Some blame must lie with me for that.’ 

Jim shrugged. 

‘You know, I think on some level, I keep believing that she was up there.’ He nodded upwards. ‘We’d find you, make contact and get beamed aboard. But I don’t have a command, or a ship. I was reckless. I could have provoked a war by barging in with no idea of what was going on…’ 

‘Jim.’ Spock’s hand came to rest on his arm. He turned and met his eye. ‘However reckless you actions were, you did not cause a war.’ 

‘And now?’ he asked. ‘What are the odds that we make it back?’ 

‘I am in no shape to calculate odds,’ Spock said. ‘And in this type of situation, I often fabricated them.’ 

Jim laughed, surprised at the sudden levity. Despite the laughter, he felt terrible. Spock’s hand moved, taking Jim’s and pressing it. His gaze seemed to take hold of him. 

‘We might die out here.’ 

Spock shook his head. 

‘We’re together.’ That was all he had to say. Jim knew what he meant. 

‘Oh Spock,’ he whispered and leaned his head against his right shoulder. Spock put his arm around him. Jim closed his eyes, letting the embrace be the only thing he knew. 

‘We almost turned around, you know,’ he said after a while. ‘There wasn’t really any reason for us to head to the barchans, no logical one at least.’ He hated to think what would have happened to Spock if they had not. ‘Do you think I knew somehow?’ 

‘That we were there?’ 

‘Yes.’ 

Spock moved his hand from Jim’s arm to his neck. He could sense him considering the question while he twirled a lock of his hair around his fingers. 

‘I am not certain,’ he said finally. ‘It is possible that it was simple chance. You are not a telepath, which may support that. On the other hand, the odds…’ He paused. ‘There is something that I believe I never told you.’ 

Jim raised his head to look at him. 

‘What?’ Those words made him nervous. 

‘When I came back to the _Enterprise_ , I told you that I had sensed V’Ger.’ 

‘Yes.’ He remembered that conversation all too well. Spock had explained that he had come back only because of his interest in the consciousness he had detected. Despite the crisis that craved his attention, Jim had felt terrible about the implicit rejection. Later on, it had not seemed to matter much, of course, but now it did. 

‘It was not the whole truth.’ 

‘Go on.’

Spock chose his words carefully. 

‘It is possible that it was wishful thinking or a telepathic hallucination, but at the same time I became aware V’Ger, I thought I also felt your thoughts.’ 

Jim was lost for words. 

‘Why did you never say?’ he asked. Spock shrugged. 

‘I do not know. At the time, I pushed it aside. Even if I had given up my attempts to achieve _kolinahr_ , I was ashamed. Perhaps I didn’t quite believe it either. How could I feel you, when you were over sixteen lightyears away?’ 

‘I can’t fault you for that,’ Jim admitted. It sounded rather unlikely.

‘It is possible that my mind was playing tricks on me,’ Spock said. ‘The preparations for the rituals were physically and mentally exhausting. But maybe it was real.’ 

‘We weren’t bonded then,’ Jim pointed out. 

‘Not formally,’ Spock said. ‘But our minds are remarkably compatible, even by Vulcan standards. You know that I believe the bond between us had been forming since we first met.’ 

Jim grinned. 

‘Yes.’ 

Spock wound a lock of his hair around his fingertip again, thinking. 

‘I can think of no precedent to this,’ he said. ‘Bonds are private things which are not spoken of, but one of the main biological purposes of the bond is to keep mates together. Perhaps, when I sensed V’Ger’s presence from far away, it served as a catalyst to let me feel your thoughts despite the distance. What is to say that some part of your mind did not sense me yesterday and influenced your decision? It might be a little like proprioception.’ 

‘I like that,’ Jim said. He remembered the ritual formula calling the betrothed to the _koon-ut-kali-fee. Parted from me and never parted, never and always touching and touched._ They were two, but simultaneously one. ‘You know, you should rest, now that you have the chance,’ he said. ‘We still have a long way to go.’ 

‘So should you,’ Spock said. Jim smiled. 

‘Fine.’ He lay down and spread out an arm. ‘Come on.’ Slowly, Spock lay down, resting his head against his chest. Jim’s impulse was to put his hand on his shoulder, but he could not. Instead, he put it against his head. 

‘You were right, by the way,’ Jim said after a while. 

‘Hm?’ 

‘It’s odd, you being on the wrong side.’ 

Spock moved his head a little, but did not answer. They stayed like that for some time, but did not fall asleep. Even lying down on a hard surface was welcome to Jim, but Spock seemed uncomfortable. When Jim touched his bare skin, he felt his pain in his own shoulder. Although they were both aware the other was awake, they did not talk or move. 

It was the sound of McCoy waking up that stirred them from their feigned sleep. He grunted, blinked a few times and sat up straight, wide awake. 

‘How long was I asleep?’ he asked. 

‘A little over half an hour,’ Spock said, sitting up. McCoy looked around. 

‘Where’s T’Pring?’ 

Jim sat up too, a little embarrassed that he had not realised she was still gone. 

‘I’ll go look for her,’ he said. He got to his feet and brushed the sand off himself. ‘Better check she hasn’t done a Titus Oates.’ 

As soon as he rounded the tarp, he saw her. She was standing some ten metres away, back turned towards him. He walked over to her. 

‘T’Pring?’ 

She looked over her shoulder, acknowledging him with a nod.

‘Captain.’ 

‘Just call me Jim,’ he said. ‘I’m not really a captain anymore.’ 

‘I am unused to such informalities,’ she admitted. 

‘If you’re more comfortable with it, Kirk is fine.’ He shrugged. ‘I don’t know if it counts, but in a way, we’re family.’ 

She threw him a puzzled look. 

‘Not in any conventional sense of the word.’ 

‘There’s really nothing conventional about any of this.’ 

She thought for a moment.

‘If you wish it, I will call you Jim.’ 

He smiled. She nodded in acknowledgement, then turned her gaze away. She was sinking back into her own thoughts.

‘Something on your mind?’ Jim asked. 

T’Pring hesitated before answering. 

‘T’Rea.’ She looked out over the broad openness of the desert. Jim wished he had something comforting to say, but he had no comparable experiences. It was different, but he still thought of David. There was so little he could say about him, only that he had had a son, that he had not known him, and that he had died. Those things were not going to help. 

‘I can’t imagine what you’re going through,’ he said finally. ‘But once we get back, we’ll help you find her.’ 

‘And if we don’t get back?’ she asked. 

‘There’s T’Pren.’ 

‘Yes,’ T’Pring said, still not looking at him. ‘But she is too young for such responsibility.’ 

‘Then let’s make sure we get you home.’ 

She turned around now. Jim got the feeling that she was trying to decide whether to point out the illogic of the statement or not. In the end, she only said: 

‘Then we should continue.’ 

They walked on. Even through his hood, Jim felt the heat of the sun against his neck. The straps of his backpack dug into his shoulders, trapping the sweat and making his skin itch. Even though they stopped regularly to drink, his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. He was not the only one. By the way McCoy carried himself, it was clear that he was as far too hot. Even Spock was sweating. Only T’Pring seemed unbothered by the heat. Bones must have noticed too, because he turned and said to Jim: 

‘Never thought I’d be jealous of that odd Vulcan physiology.’ 

Jim forced a smile. He did not want to open his mouth to the hot air. He thought now that they should have rested longer. The sun was too bright and warm. They would move faster when it was cooler, but they were already far behind what he had hoped they would be. If they kept up this pace, they would have to walk well into the night. 

He was woken from his thoughts by McCoy. 

‘Look over there.’ 

They stopped and looked to where he was pointing. In the distance, a bird took off and launched itself back towards the ground. Jim could just make out the flapping wings on the ground. They scuffled against each other, squabbling over the carrion. He looked away, sickened. Spock closed his eyes for a moment in respect. 

‘That is the crash-site?’ T’Pring said quietly. 

‘Yes,’ McCoy said. 

‘We should put more distance between it and us,’ Jim said. 

A swift shadow of a bird passed over them. They looked up. It had already passed, flying fast away from them. Jim looked back towards the crashed landspeeder. The birds rose in a dark mass, scattering from the wreckage. Spock drew a sharp breath. McCoy caught Jim’s eye. The unspoken question travelled between the three of them. Jim pulled his goggles down and picked up his binoculars. 

First all he could see was the air trembling in the heat. Then he saw it, just at the horizon – the glint of metal that swiftly took shape. He lowered the binoculars. 

‘Everyone down!’ 

In a flurry of movement, they shed their backpacks and got down on their stomachs. Jim pushed himself up onto his elbows and picked up the field-glasses again. 

‘It’s a landspeeder,’ he said. ‘Dead ahead.’ 

‘Shouldn’t we get out of the way?’ McCoy asked. 

‘No. We stay down and hope they don’t see us,’ Jim said. 

‘In this type of terrain, a landspeeder will stay at least 1.4 metres over the ground,’ Spock said. ‘If it comes down to it, it could pass over us.’ 

The vehicle was moving fast. It had already cleared the wreckage. T’Pring gestured at the binoculars. 

‘May I?’ 

‘Of course.’ Jim took the strap from around his neck and handed the field-glasses to her. As she watched the landspeeder’s progression, Jim looked over at Spock. His face was strained, but he could not tell if it was from pain or concentration. ‘Spock?’ 

He glanced over at him, then shook his head as if to tell him not to worry. He looked back out over the desert. 

‘There are two of them.’ 

Jim followed his gaze. He saw the shape of two vehicles; if he squinted, he could make out the silhouettes of the pilots. 

The sand shifted on his other side. T’Pring was getting up.

‘What the hell are you doing!?’ 

‘T’Pring, get down!’ 

‘ _Ne’ti hafau_!’

It was as if she did not hear their shouts. She rose to her full height, her eyes fixed on the approaching landspeeders. 

‘They’ll see you!’ Jim shouted. ‘Get down – you’ll get us killed!’

She raised her chin. His first thought had been that perhaps something beyond her control was making her irrational. That small, haughty movement convinced him she knew what she was doing. He pushed himself up and ran at her. Her hand shot out and connected with his neck before he reached her. With a shout of pain, he fell. The pinch was not enough to knock him out, only render him paralysed for a few seconds. They were enough. She took several decisive steps away from them, towards the approaching landspeeders. Her hand went to her throat. 

‘T’Pring, no!’ Spock shouted. 

The scarf came loose in her hand. She raised it aloft and let the wind catch it. It shook out the folds and the creases. The breeze tore at her braid, unravelling it. Her hair whipped around her head. Jim felt his heart in his throat. Beside him, Spock and McCoy watched with wide eyes how T’Pring’s shawl flew in the wind, and how the land-speeders changed course a fraction. There was no reason to stop her now. They had been spotted. 

Jim pushed himself to his feet again. The nerve-pinch had left him feeling weak and disoriented, but he found his balance. 

‘What the hell have you done?’ 

‘I do not answer to you,’ T’Pring said. ‘The others may take your lead, but I refuse to die.’

She pulled something out of the toolkit and, without looking, threw it at him. He caught it. It was the communicator. Jim cursed under his breath. The light of the tracking-beacon was blinking.

‘Do you think you can strike a deal with them?’ he asked. ‘Or have you been working for them all along?’ 

Now she turned around and looked at him in confusion. 

‘What are you talking about?’ she asked. 

Beyond her, the landspeeders were coming ever nearer. A person stood up in one of them and pushed their hood back. Jim looked away from T’Pring at them. He knew that elaborate hairstyle. In the other landspeeder, one of the pilots rose. His grey hair glinted in the sun. A completely new feeling came over him. 

‘Bones! Spock! Look!’ he called, hurrying back to them. McCoy was already on his feet. Together, they supported Spock as he rose.

‘Well I’ll be damned,’ McCoy murmured. Spock only raised his eyebrows. Jim raised his arm and waved. 

‘Over here!’ 

The landspeeders hurtled towards them, coming to a stop on either side. Jim looked from one to the other. It did not quite seem real. At the controls of one of them sat Sobek, who watched them with undeniable fondness, and T’Lak, who waved at them all. T’Paal jumped out and crossed to McCoy. Over the loud engines, Jim could hear them talking in Vulcan medical jargon. 

In the other landspeeder, Savel was at the primary controls. Sarek descended from the secondary control seat. 

‘Spock.’ He crossed to his son swiftly. ‘You are injured.’ He then looked at Jim. ‘Kirk.’ 

‘Sir.’ 

‘We have no time to lose. Come.’ 

They followed him to the landspeeder. Sarek climbed up first and pulled up Spock after him. Jim planted his foot on the side-beam and pushed himself up. T’Pring and McCoy was already onboard the other landspeeder, which took off. T’Paal crossed to the remaining vehicle at a run. As soon as she planted her foot on the deck, Savel turned the controls. The landspeeder rose further off the ground and accelerated. The noise of the engines drowned out the sound of T’Paal’s medical scanner, already trained at Spock. Jim could not even hear the sound of his own heavy breathing. 

The hand on his shoulder made him jump. When he turned around, he saw how Sarek had turned in his seat. He did not speak, but his gaze conveyed his message. Jim gave him a nod, acknowledging the silent thanks. Sarek let go of his shoulder and turned back. Jim exhaled, exhaustion and relief threatening to overwhelm them. From where he sat at the back of the landspeeder, the Tanit desert stretched on endlessly. They hurtled away from it, back towards Shi’Kahr.


	6. Part VI: Epilogue

Chess was usually not a spectator sport, but this was not a bad way to spend an afternoon. 

‘Your queen is in danger,’ Jim said. 

‘I am aware of that.’ Spock moved his rook. ‘Check.’ 

Jim frowned, thought for a moment and made his move. 

‘Your move, Captain.’ 

Spock raised an eyebrow and moved his queen.

‘Check mate.’ 

Jim frowned, looked at the board and said: 

‘I should have seen that coming.’

‘Indeed you should,’ Spock said, already resetting the board. 

‘I think it’s time to stop worrying about him, Jim,’ McCoy said, making no attempt at suppressing his grin. ‘Or you’ll never win against him again.’ 

Jim smiled. 

‘Rematch?’ 

‘Gladly.’ 

McCoy leaned back in his chair, smiling contently. For all the insecurity on Vulcan, this room was a calm haven. They had sat here since lunch, not talking much. At first, McCoy had done the crossword, while Spock and Jim played chess. Eventually, he had put the puzzle aside and watched them instead. Spock’s arm was still in a sling, but how roundly he had beaten Jim proved that he was doing well, even if Jim had been obviously distracted. Ever since they had discharged Spock, he had seemed almost giddy with happiness. He was not the only one. McCoy had never seen such fussing as Amanda had inflicted on the three of them, particularly Spock. Through the window, he could see her in the rose-garden, walking at Sarek’s side. A human couple would have walked arm in arm or hand in hand, but Sarek held his hands steepled, while Amanda clasped hers in front of her. As the path turned and they followed it, McCoy saw how Sarek’s eyes locked on something. He looked away quickly. When he glanced over at Spock, he was not surprised to see him with his eyes averted. 

‘Is he really not talking to you?’ McCoy asked. 

‘Not as such,’ Spock said, his eyes on the chess-game now. ‘But he has avoided me when I am alone.’ 

‘He’s just angry,’ Jim said. ‘At the president, at the diplomats, at the first minister, but not you.’ 

Spock considered it. 

‘What is the wording of that human cliché? He is not angry, he is simply disappointed.’ 

‘That’s more or less it,’ Jim said. 

‘Look, I don’t want us to go through this malarky again,’ McCoy said, ‘but I can’t blame him for worrying. If Joanna had done anything half as stupid, I’d hit the ceiling – and yes, I know that it wasn’t your idea, but that’s not going to factor into it.’ 

‘My father is not prone to emotion, Doctor.’ 

‘Doesn’t mean he doesn’t have them.’ 

Jim cut in. 

‘It’ll blow over,’ he said. ‘Sooner or later.’ 

The door opened. A servant crossed to Spock and conveyed something under his breath. Spock raised an eyebrow, intrigued, and nodded. The servant left and showed the guest in.

For a moment, McCoy did not realise who the visitor was. The image of the cool woman in desert gear had almost obscured his old memory of T’Pring. In her elegant robes and her carefully tied headscarf, she looked quite different. Both he and Jim started rising to greet her, but she stopped them with a wave of the hand. 

‘There is no need to stand,’ she said. 

‘It’s good seeing you looking so well, ma’am.’ McCoy looked over at Spock. ‘If you want me to leave…’ Spock shook his head. 

‘I see no need.’ 

‘At least let me get you a chair.’ He stood and moved a chair closer. With a nod of thanks, T’Pring took it, sitting very straight, her hands on her knees.

‘I heard you had been discharged,’ she said to Spock. ‘I wanted to come to see how your recovery was proceeding.’ She looked a little uncomfortable; McCoy guessed she was thinking about the fact that she had been the one to cause the worst of his injuries. ‘Can they tell if there will be any lasting damage to your shoulder?’ 

‘Not yet,’ Spock said. ‘There is still some procedures left to do, but I remain hopeful. As long as I can still play the lyre, I will be pleased.’ 

‘Then I hope for that,’ she said. 

Jim, who had watched her in silence, spoke next. 

‘T’Pring, I feel I owe you an apology. I jumped to conclusions.’ 

‘But no conclusions that Spock had not considered first,’ she observed. 

‘Still. When it comes down to it, you made the better decision,’ he said. ‘You probably saved all of our lives.’ 

‘Hypotheticals are illogical.’

Jim grinned.

‘How’s your family holding up?’ he asked, compassion in his voice.

‘I have some news,’ T’Pring said. ‘They have found T’Rea.’ 

Spock raised his eyebrows. 

‘Unharmed?’ 

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘She is safe.’ 

‘That must be a huge relief,’ Jim said. ‘How did they find her?’ 

‘She never left Shi’Kahr,’ T’Pring explained. ‘She was on the other side of the city, in a house with a number of other adolescents. She was arrested for spray-painting Kesaya slogans on a government building.’ She looked down at her hands for a moment to ground herself. ‘It seems that it was the worst she did. The authorities believe she had no involvement with any violent act.’ 

‘So what now?’ McCoy asked. 

‘Rehabilitation,’ T’Pring said. ‘For now, she is at a facility. She was not held criminally responsible for the little she did, but she has to stay there for some time. After that, I hope that they will let her come home.’ 

‘It’s not going to be easy for her,’ he said. ‘But it sounds like what she needs. For what it’s worth, I’d be happy to help. I’m not a psychiatrist, but perhaps that could be good, once she’s discharged.’ 

‘Thank you, Doctor,’ she said appreciatively. ‘She is not overly fond of humans, but if you do not mind the risk of being insulted…’ 

‘Don’t worry, that I’m used to.’ 

Jim laughed. T’Pring turned her attention to him and Spock. 

‘There is another issue I wanted to raise.’ 

‘Go ahead,’ Jim said. 

‘Are you planning to stay on Vulcan indefinitely?’ 

‘No, but we’re not sure when we’re going back,’ he said. ‘There are things keeping us here, not least Spock’s shoulder.’ 

‘And the Vulcan government is finally taking an interest in the Kesaya situation,’ Spock said. 

‘But then you will return to Earth?’ T’Pring said. 

‘Eventually, yes,’ Spock said. He leaned forward a little, clearly curious. ‘How come you ask?’ 

T’Pring took a deep breath, grounding herself. 

‘Since our rescue, I have thought about what has gone wrong in our society. My conclusion has been that we are all to blame, to some extent, for the Kesaya. Isolationists and separatists may be in the minority, but even we who do not believe such things act as if we do. We are part of the Federation, but we do not interact enough with other worlds.’ She paused. ‘Over the past month, I have discussed this with T’Pren. It turns out that she has been considering these things for some time, including applying to Starfleet Academy.’ 

Spock raised his eyebrows in mild surprise.

‘Is she just considering this or…?’ Jim asked.

‘She is set on it,’ T’Pring said. ‘She has excellent grades. Her supervisors have given her their highest recommendation.’ 

Jim and Spock looked at each other, deliberating. 

‘There are a lot of tests involved,’ Jim said. 

‘But assuming she passes them, I would think she’d be an ideal candidate,’ Spock said. 

‘How do you feel about it?’ McCoy asked. ’She’d only be able to come visit once a year. Don’t you think that T’Rea might need her sister close?’ 

‘T’Rea is my responsibility,’ T’Pring said. ‘T’Pren cares deeply for her sister, but that should not dictate her life. This is what she wants.’ 

‘How can we help?’ Spock asked. 

T’Pring paused to choose her words. Then she looked directly at Spock.

‘I do not like the thought of her so far away, on her own. She has never been off-world. If she is accepted into the Academy, would you help her?’ 

Spock blinked. The moment seemed to draw out, never passing. McCoy knew exactly what he was thinking of – another young woman, confined to a cell on some prison colony for her betrayal.

The moment ended. 

‘It would be my honour,’ Spock said. T’Pring bowed her head in thanks. 

‘She insisted she come with me,’ she said. ‘I asked her to wait outside, to give me time to explain…’ 

Jim glanced at McCoy. 

‘Bones, would you…?’ 

‘Of course.’ He crossed to the door and looked out into the corridor. A young woman stood outside, studying the art on the walls. ‘Hello there.’ 

She looked over at him. 

‘Hello.’ 

McCoy cocked his head. 

‘Your mum wants you.’

T’Pren tugged at her jacket and pushed a stray lock of hair behind her ear before following him inside. T’Pring stood up and beckoned her to her side. T’Pren crossed to her, carrying herself in a way McCoy was not used to seeing in civilians, even if they were Vulcan. 

‘Captain Spock, Captain Kirk,’ said T’Pring. ‘My daughter, T’Pren.’ 

T’Pren raised her hand in a Vulcan salute. 

‘Your hospitality is an honour,’ she said. 

Spock studied her for a moment. Then his eyes lit up. He smiled at his pupil and saluted her. McCoy leaned against the wall with a grin. Things were getting back to how they should be.


End file.
